


The fifth cardinal point

by Lucy31



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Allison's death (mentions), Alternate Universe, But Stiles loves her, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Future Fic, Lydia never met Stiles, Not a fan of Peter Hale, Peter Hale (mentions) - Freeform, Road Trips, Scott McCall (mentions) - Freeform, Set in Europe, Slow Burn, bed sharing and eventually more, the sheriff is dead
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2018-11-27
Packaged: 2019-01-10 17:50:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 85,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12304443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucy31/pseuds/Lucy31
Summary: A few months after being attacked by Peter, Lydia and her mom leave Beacon Hills.Ten years after, she meets a boy she barely knew in high school and decides to follow him.Or, another fic in which Stiles and Lydia heal each other's wounds...





	1. Prologue - Marie Curie and Luke Skywalker

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I'm finally able to post it... Some of the first scenes where written years ago, before Teen Wolf even existed but I never found how to write a story with them. And then Teen Wolf happened, Stydia happened, I read a lot of amazing fics and it hit me: this is a Stydia story!
> 
> First thing to know: I'm French and wrote it in French first so if anyone is interested I can post it in French too, there are some slight differences.
> 
> She's gonna be sick of hearing me saying this but thanks again to Eicartgeorge for helping me with the translation. You have no idea how much it means to me... If you ever come to France, let me know and I'll take you to the finest restaurant or bakery (depends on what you like most...)  
> Anyway, thank you so much :)
> 
> And thanks to all the wonderful people I met in this fandom, I wouldn't write it if it weren't for you.
> 
> I will try to update as much as I can but translating is a long work and I don't want to rush it so... Sorry in advance...
> 
> I let the title in French because I couldn't find a translation that I liked but if you have an idea, let me know! And this works for everything, critics and remarks are always welcomed.

Lydia Martin grew up in a small town in California, surrounded by her mother and her father.

When she was a child, she had a keen interest in everything and she fought with all of her strength the idea that girls had to love pink and sweet things. She didn’t like pink, she hated playing with dolls and she abhorred strawberry jam.

She tried to stay away from everything that could make her be seen as a “good girl”. She liked mathematics, she liked to know the limits, and she liked rules and proportions. They made her feel safe. She liked stories with bold and fearless young girls. She idolized Marie Curie. She didn’t have lots of friends, but the ones she had were more than enough.

But on a cold morning, her father left. Without saying anything, without even kissing her goodbye. Suddenly, loneliness weighed too heavy on her shoulders, and she shaped herself a new identity. She began to dress in pink, to hide her curiosity, her books; and she forced herself to eat strawberry jam with a smile. All she could recognize was this fake, factory-made taste that always left too much sugar on her lips, but it was apparently the price a girl like her had to pay to avoid loneliness. She only associated with the most popular girls and boys and soon, the little girl who dreamed about making a radical change in mathematics drowned herself. She was still here, somewhere, but she was starving.

In her shadow, a young boy grew up, admiring her from afar. Not the Lydia she kept showing to everyone but the one she kept prisoner deep inside. When he was a child, he pictured himself coming to her rescue on a white horse just like in the fairy tales his mother read to him. Later, when he discovered _Star War_ s (and thought it was the best thing on earth), he dreamed he was a Jedi knight, fighting all of her suitors, all of them ignoring her true self, her true spirit. He would take her in his space ship and bring her to the most beautiful planet where they would spend their days swimming in the sea and eating ice cream. He refused to have a tragic fate, and he had always preferred the pragmatic Luke to the emotional Anakin. Luke remained his role model during his entire childhood, he wanted to follow his steps. Wanted to always make his friends and family a priority while respecting the value of human life. It was the only way he could create a peaceful and happy world for Lydia.

Sadly, his mother died from a terrible disease and he figured that he didn’t have the stature of a prince and even less of a Jedi when he couldn’t even save his mother. He stopped comparing himself with Luke, fearing that his life was becoming too similar to Anakin’s.

Years passed, but Stiles Stilinski kept observing Lydia, trying his best to make life easier for her without waiting for anything in return. It had become a part of his DNA. Day after day he fed his love for her. He fought all those cavemen who called her an easy girl or a bitch. He corrected those who called her a redhead. _It's strawberry blonde,_ she'd told the class full of eight year-olds. _The French call it Venetian blonde._ He remembered, why couldn't anyone else? Venetian blonde. His one and only Venetian goddess. Without equal.

Thus, they grew up, safe from any other shadow until the world decided to turn its attention on them again. They fell into a spiral of violence and death, were forced to grow up and grow wiser too quickly, too brutally.

Lydia stopped eating strawberry jam and isolated herself in the sterile and reassuring world of mathematics after moving to Europe when she was 16 years old.

Stiles protected that part of himself, the part of him that lived only for Lydia, for a long time, and he protected it at any cost. Just like the orchid that sat in his mom's hospital room, he would tend to that part of himself, watering it regularly to keep it alive.

But when Lydia left for good without having ever set an eye on him, he let that part of him wither. Just like his mother's orchid. Once she was no longer there, there was no point in keeping it pretty for her any more.

Sometimes, in his sleep, he would water that proverbial plant inside of him with a few tears. Keeping it alive. Weak, but still there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hesitate to comment, you'll make my day !   
> I'm twLucy31 on twitter if you want to talk :)


	2. Lost souls swimming in a fishbowl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from the Pink Floyd song "Wish you were here"

_The little path disappeared into the bowels of the city. A tortuous path bordered by dilapidated buildings. The path was so narrow and the buildings so close next to each other that if one would raise his head, he would barely make out the sky during a storm. With the passing of time, the roofs began to come even closer to each other. For years, every building had been on the verge of collapsing, threatening to forever erase this path where only stray dogs and young people searching for the thrill ventured._

_Legend had it that a monster hid itself somewhere in this maze, a monster with red eyes. Some said that it was once a man. A man able to turn into a wolf and that one day, after living for so long in the skin of an animal and feeding on human flesh, he lost his mind, roaming in the dying heart of a nameless city. He became incapable of finding an exit and never managed to remember its original shape._

_Others said that this thing was neither human, nor animal and swore they saw a tentacle appear from nowhere while hearing a guttural groan and a voice ordering them to come closer. Over time, tourists and passers-by learned to keep a respectful distance with this alley where hell seemed to have taken residence._

_Some nosy people didn’t really care about those fears but every month, even they could hear those barely human cries echoing in empty streets and reminding everyone in the city, that somewhere in the shadows, an unknown evil was prowling._

* * *

Today was a big day for her, the fulfilment of a huge part of her life spent trying to make a difference in the research in mathematics, struggling to finish her project in time, struggling against herself and against her loneliness. She had never really been alone, she had always known how to surround herself with people. No, she had never been alone. But she had been lonely. Isolated in her head, in herself, no one seemed to ever be able to reach her, fathom her soul and her personality, to complement her aspirations and needs.

Her eyes locked on the wall, a steaming cup of tea in the hands, she felt under her fingers the scar covering her left hip. The movement had become instinctive with the years, an answer to an ache that came back every now and then. She finished her tea, burning her throat in the process.

She kept glancing at the cake leftovers from the day before. They had a party at work and her colleagues let her keep the cake. It used to say “Congratulations Lydia!” but “-ations -ia!” was all that was left. She grabbed a fork and jabbed it into the exclamation point, before taking a huge bite. Her mum would have yelled at her but who cares… today it was the breakfast of a Field’s Medal recipient.

The sun began to rise, the sky was orange-pink and the birds awoke in the morning dew. She was about to receive the Field’s Medal and compliments that would make her smile. So many signs indicated that she was about to begin a new life. But she didn’t believe in such omens and a dizziness reminded her that once the peak was reached, the only way left was down. It had always been like this. It was a lesson she learned the hardest way a long time ago, on another continent, in another life…

She took the subway and during the entire journey, she had an unpleasant feeling that something was about to happen, something serious, dark and inhuman. She tried to suppress this feeling that started to build a lump deep in her throat, making her want to scream with all her strength. By the time she reached her station, her eyes were burning with tears. She ran out, trying to calm herself, focusing on her breathing.

That’s when she saw it. A dark shape sitting in the middle of the street. Eyes she would never forget, anchored in her retina. _It_ was looking at her. They were alone. Suddenly it was the night, she was 15. He came out of the shadows and threw himself at her. Blood. A high-pitched sound in her ears. Wet grass on her bare skin. Violence. Red eyes. Pitch black.

She still remembered the look of disbelief in the eyes of the policeman when she told him of the attack. At first, he was horrified by the sight of this teenage girl covered in blood, her wild eyes full of tears. Her silver dress torn apart. Her mother was in tears. She had stayed by her side, not knowing how to hold her, too afraid to hurt her even more.

Then, the eyes of the policeman took the colour of boredom, thinking this was another prank when she said she had been attacked by a man in his forties, a man with red eyes. And fangs. She had tried to describe what happened as much as she could but everything was a blur after the moment the man threw himself at her.

The policeman kept tirelessly asking about the weapon. What was it? It had to be sharp given the scar! Was she raped? Is that why she couldn’t talk? Because she was traumatized? Ashamed?

She didn’t have any answer. It happened a few minutes ago but she could only summarize the memory in one nagging pain that had started in her left hip before spreading in her entire body and an irrational fear. The same she felt every time she was confronted with inexplicable stories involving paranormal, ghosts or spirits of the dead. A paralysing fear that chilled her to the bones and crept beneath her flesh.

The way she described the man was so confused, contained so may strange details, that the policeman ended up leaving to let the doctors examine her.

It happened over ten years ago but she was still sure that the weapon used was the man himself. Her Cartesian mind refused the idea but she knew deep down, that she had been attacked by a monster. A monster in the literal sense of the word. Something that no mathematical or physical law could explain. And this simple idea filled her with an unspeakable terror.

It was light again. She opened her eyes, not remembering when she closed them. The thing in front of her had seemed to change its shape. It was a man, watching her, seeming like he wanted to tell her something. She came closer, almost hypnotized. He wasn’t producing words but sounds, as if he hadn’t spoken in years. He was struggling to articulate and opened even more his mouth, looking for oxygen. She caught sight of sharp teeth and suddenly came back to reality, collecting her wits. She ran away, trying to forget words she thought she had long forgotten. Words that had haunted her nightmares for years. The words a monster had told her once, making her believe that love could only be conjugated with the first-person singular, that the colour of love was red. The colour of passion, desire, blood, violence and death. A monster who asked her to open up for him, to let him in without giving her any choice. A monster who told her “I love you” the mouth full with her entrails.

When she arrived in the conference room, she had dried her tears and had redone her make-up. She was perfect, as usual. Lydia Martin would never let the monsters of her past affect her. It was a promise she made to herself. She could only count on her.

Soon enough her friends surrounded her with genuine smiles, taking her in their arms. She was where she wanted to be for years. She fought to be here. However, she felt more isolated than ever, as if she was in the heart of a dark alley, teetering on the edge of a precipice, facing a force ready to swallow her whole and crush her.

It was a long time since she last felt the warmth of a light in her life and all this dark matter threatened to collapse on her and create a black hole that would wipe her out.

She received the Field’s Medal and then it happened: she smiled, a smile without any meaning, the leftovers of forgotten happiness, imprinted in her muscles but erased from her memory. That was it? The peak? She should have known. At a mountain peak there is no vegetation, no life, not enough oxygen. At a mountain peak, you are alone, isolated from a world you can only observe from above, from afar, without being able to take part and with no one at your side to admire it.

The day went by. She went from conference to conference, it helped her suppress her memories. She listened to people as smart as her talking about new theories, she gave her opinion and people listened to her.

The year she turned 7 was the year Maryam Mirzakhani died, the first woman who received the Field’s Medal. Lydia had wanted to read everything about her and her researches. It wasn’t long until Lydia made her one of her female rolemodel, next to Marie Curie. In school, she fell in love with Riemann surfaces and symplectic geometry. She wrote her first essay about it when she was 17. It wasn’t perfect and a lot of professors rose up against this teenage girl who thought she could turn their research field upside down.

Today she felt important, revered among wise men, the only woman among an assembly of too many fifty years-old white men. She was proud of her, proud of her development... but this pride wasn’t the warm light she expected. It felt more like the thin blanket that would leave you shivering during cold winter evenings. It wasn’t enough to cover her, to warm up her delicate and tired body.

She shook hands for the umpteenth time with yet another professor whose gaze was set too far below her eye line, and that was when she decided to leave. The afternoon was slowly turning into the evening and she kept feeling the hole in her chest growing always bigger. She needed to get lost in the crowd that filled the bustling streets at this hour to clear her mind. She sometimes felt like some creature unable to create her own happiness, like she needed to feel, to absorb the other’s happiness to finally feel this warmth inside of her.

She walked down the streets without knowing where her feet were taking her and went through the city-centre. She liked the places filled with tourists, those people who were just passing by, leaving behind them only smiles, joy and carefree laughter. She didn’t know them but she liked to invent their lives, happy ones, the kinds of lives that could only exist in the sappiest romance movies. She craved this happiness. Her throat was raw after so many years waking up screaming or crying from her nightmares and she needed this honey to soothe her aches.

She quickly ducked into a cafe. She enjoyed the atmosphere these types of places had to offer the feeling of light-heartedness and joviality. People came in to rest, relax, or just sit around laughing and joking with friends; and if any conversations were met with hostility, all she had to do was look toward another table to see happiness and smiles.

With her hands above her steaming cup, she observed the other customers from her table at the back of the room. Jazz music, orange light and foreign languages all around calmed her. She could eventually feel this warmth she had been looking for the entire day.

Her eyes fell on one of the waiters, something in his face, in the way he moved reminded her of a distant memory. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, she had met so many strangers, had tried so many times to find a familiar face in the crowd that she no longer knew what or who she was looking for. She craved familiarity. She felt as if she was in front of a mirage without having the slightest idea about what could have created it.

Somebody called him but she couldn’t hear his name. He went toward her, looking weary and tired, took off his apron and opened the “staff only” door next to her. The small bubble of warmth that had begun to grow inside of her exploded with the slam of the door, causing her a dull pain and making her feel a weight on her chest. She had felt tears in her eyes when her look had fallen inadvertently on the waiter’s forearm on which she had spotted a tattoo. He moved too quickly for her to be sure but she could have sworn it resembled a bow and arrow. She left without even finishing her tea. Memories were too painful.

That night, Allison visited her dreams. Lydia never learnt how Allison died. A phone call woke her up in the middle of the night. Her best friend, the one she left behind in America was dead. _Murdered_ , said the man who called her. The image that followed was the one that haunted her dreams, tormenting her. Allison lying on the cold ground, moonlight paling her features against the dark red blood in her mouth, lifeless eyes fixated on the sky. Allison would beg Lydia to come back and Lydia would beg the universe to bring her best friend back, but their pleas were as useless as the bow and arrows lying at the hunter’s feet.

Her scream and tears woke her up once again. In one month and three days, Allison would have been dead for ten years. For ten years Lydia had been living without any light in her life, she had been cold, for ten years she had been lonely. She never had the strength to visit her grave in France but right now, it felt important. She wasn’t there ten years ago, she had to be there ten years later. She stood up, went slowly to her computer and bought tickets to France.

She recalled the man in the gutter who reminded her of the monster of her past. The one who had started everything. What would her life have been if she had never crossed his path?

She went out on her balcony, the wind made her shiver and the moon, not quite full, pushed back every shadow with its harsh light. Lydia tightened her robe around her small frame and rubbed her arms, trying to warm herself up.

Her thoughts carried her away, far away, beyond the ocean, to the Californian sun and this warmth she had been incapable of feeling for so long. An allegory of grief, that’s what she had become. As an answer to her thought, a cry rang out in the distance, a cry coming from the heart of the city, a wolf was howling, seeming to beg the moon to end its misery.

No one answered.

* * *

Since he left the cafe the day before, Stiles sensed that something had changed. He didn’t know what exactly but the void inside of him was different, heavier, harder to withstand. He opened the cafedoor, set the tables and turned the coffee machines on.

He had been doing this job for a few months and already considered quitting, the one he was looking for was obviously elsewhere. His searches had brought him to this town but his source had been wrong. There were no traces of Peter Hale. The unsolved murders were purely, and quite simply, human. Another psychopath who enjoyed biting teenage girls through the skin after assaulting them. They were found dead, left naked in ditches. Nothing supernatural about that. This thought made Stiles shiver... not all monsters had fangs and glowing red eyes. After spending all those years tracking down the supernatural and trying to keep it hidden from the eyes of ordinary humans, he had almost forgotten that evil didn’t have any gender, colour or shape.

He had been following Peter Hale’s trail for years now. Everything had begun with him, this disturbed being who assaulted teenagers. Scott, Lydia, Allison… He had disappeared overnight, leaving them all to face the consequences of his own actions, without explaining the rules of the game, without even asking them if they wanted to play.

He was in touch with a member of the Hale family who'd rather remain anonymous and wanted to see Peter dead. He gave him all the leads he had and to date, he had two.

One of them led him here, to London. After spending several months trying to infiltrate the police to follow the investigation, Stiles was able to confirm to his source that the body didn’t have any biting nor scratching marks. He tracked down the man and could see by himself that he wasn’t supernatural.

Stiles went through the cafe post and took the leaflets he had to pin on the wall. He looked vaguely at the first one which announced a conference. His eyes were drawn to a name, a name he thought he would never see or hear again. He felt his stomach fall and his guts twist, he couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe: _Lydia Martin, Field’s Medal recipient_.

Everything he had tried to suppress for all those years came rushing back to the surface. It was sweet and brutal all at once. A teenager: naïve about love, full of hope and awe; but then there were flashes of blood, terror, death, and guilt.

Beads of sweat stood out on his brow, _breathe, calm down_. He looked at his forearm and at the Japanese kanji and the arrow: his reality, his identity, his sense of self. He counted his fingers, closed his eyes and focused on his breathing. When he opened his eyes again, his breath was less halting and his features had hardened. He crumpled the leaflet into a ball and threw it away. Things you don’t know can’t hurt you… right?

But the thought was ingrained in his brain and the seed had germinated. _She_ was there, in the same city as him. He couldn’t see her again, he shouldn’t… He tried the entire day to reason with his heart that was pounding faster every time someone would open the door. Tomorrow… Tomorrow he will give his notice and follow the new lead he had received.

Night came and he couldn’t sleep, which hadn’t happened to him in years, since he left actually. Usually, when he had trouble falling asleep, he would start another _Star Wars_ marathon. He knew all the dialogues by heart but every time, he felt the same excitement he felt when he watched it for the first time. For hours he was in a galaxy far far away…

But he stopped after twenty minutes of _A New Hope_ , he needed to know.

He looked for her on the internet and discovered she arrived just a few years before him in Europe.

He fell asleep at 5 AM on his computer and dreamed about California, high school, about a world without guilt, without this weight on his shoulders. A light and warm world where the girl of his dreams, the love of his life didn’t have to suffer. A world where Scott, his best friend... his _brother..._ didn't have to go through hell after his soulmate, Allison, took her dying breath in his arms as he watched... powerless to do anything. A world where his father would still be alive. A world where he was able to save the ones he loved, sparing them grief. A world where he would still be like the other humans, blessed with the ignorance of all the supernatural shadows daily hanging above them, above their happiness. A dream. A mirage vanishing the second he opened his eyes.

He sent his resignation letter the very same morning and took off, trying to suppress the ache nagging him at the idea that Lydia was somewhere, in one of those buildings and that he would leave without seeing her. He couldn’t help wondering what she had become. He hoped she was happy, she had turned over a new leaf.

While waiting for the bus, he couldn’t stop the smile creeping on his lips. She made it, she won the Field’s Medal… He never doubted it, never doubted her…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hesitate to comment, you'll make my day !  
> I'm twLucy31 on twitter if you want to talk :)


	3. Allison, sonne, sonne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter title comes from the chorus of a song by Ycare. You'll understand the meaning at the end of the chapter :)
> 
> Thanks again to Eicartgeorge for being so patient with me and my frantic use of commas :)
> 
> Thank you so much to all of you who left kudos and took time to read what I wrote.
> 
> And a final thanks to Angelina, your comment made me live again, you're amazing <3

A few weeks had passed since Stiles first arrived in France. His second lead had brought him deep in the Lozère, a region in the south of the country with green and undulating landscapes. He would sometimes catch sight of the dazzling view of a sheer cliff overhanging a turquoise river. This idyllic colour was the result of the combined reflection of the trees and the clear blue sky.

But Stiles knew better. He had come here once and knew that this region was everything but heaven on earth. Landscapes were sometimes arid and devoid of shadow, the sun could turn the soil yellow, drying it up until only fissures remained, killing every life form in its wake. That’s where the Argents had acquired their reputation when they had rid the country of _la Bête du Gévaudan_. That’s where they lived for centuries from the cradle to the grave, and that’s where Allison Argent was buried for all eternity.

Everything was slowly coming back to him: the solitary road he was currently driving, the names, the scents... everything. The sun was barely rising in the sky, but he was already dripping with sweat. The heat was such that the morning dew kept evaporating, making the air that filtered through his opened window hot and humid. Despite the open horizon in front of him, he was already suffocating.

He didn’t really know where he was going, he just needed to have a break from everything... clear his mind after having spent yet another sleepless night chasing a ghost, another wrong track.

The matter at hand involved two rival gangs and several men ending up in the ER with serious injuries and bite marks. According to his source, Peter could have been a gang leader. Stiles managed to get a meeting organized between the two, making them believe that the other was ready to surrender. He wanted to witness the meeting, hidden in a dark corner, but could only see one of the men. The other had stayed in his car and had taken off after probably understanding that it was a trap. Stiles had followed him the entire night but eventually had to face the cold truth: this wasn’t Peter.

Chasing this man had exhausted him and yet, he had struggled to find sleep. He had walked out of the hotel, down the streets, climbed into his car, and began to drive with the sole purpose of leaving.

A lump grew in his throat when he understood where his ride was taking him: right into the little village of Marvejols, former capital of Gévaudan and Allison Argent’s final resting place.

He parked his car outside of the village and started to pick flowers: poppies, wild irises, daisies and cypress branches. The entire village was quiet, still asleep. The only sound was coming from his steps echoing in the narrow street as he climbed up to the cemetery. The bouquet in his hands and his eyes already wet from tears, he kept walking, his thought all devoted to the one who never should have died.

 

* * *

 

She was in front of the cemetery, a bouquet of white everlasting flowers gripped in her shaky hands. The morning breeze was already stifling and the cicada had begun their concert, building a striking contrast between the dawning nature and the cemetery.

She opened the rusty gate and wandered a little while before she eventually found Allison’s grave. Without knowing why, it wrung her heart to see that someone must have regularly cleaned the stone and rearranged the flowers. Taking care of it, of _her_.

On the gravestone, Allison’s name was surmounted by the silhouette of a woman bending a bow with an arrow toward a howling wolf. Underneath it was an inscription saying _Beloved daughter, gone too soon, guardian of the weak and light in the darkness, may you find a world in peace._ Someone had added a slab with what looked like a motto: _We protect those who can’t protect themselves_.

Lydia suddenly had an unpleasant feeling. She realized that she may have only known a small part of her best friend’s life. The thought that maybe something even more tragic than what she had imagined could have happened to Allison brought tears to her green eyes.

She kneeled in front of the gravestone and laid her bouquet on it. She was clueless about what to do. Was she supposed to say something? Should she? She felt a little silly and almost took off but her feet were stuck in front of the cold marble.

With a choked and faltering voice, she began to talk.

“I brought you flowers. I had no idea what kind of flowers to bring so I had to ask to a florist. Apparently everlasting flowers are cemetery flowers.”

She choked on the word _cemetery_ and had to suppress a sob before resuming.

“They _are_ pretty…” she said, her eyes lost in a distant memory, “They suit you. But then again, I don’t know which flowers are your favourites… I don’t know anything about flowers actually… Something made me think about you and I came here. On an impulse, truth be told. I should have come sooner, I’m sorry. I guess I never had the strength, but I should have come… I miss you so much. Nobody has ever replaced you in my life. I wish you could know how much I thought about you, how many times I wished you were here. Ever since I heard about your death it has been hard, really hard. For months I kept wanting to call you to tell you about my day or just to stay hours on the phone talking about one thing and another. I used to call your number just to hear your voice telling me to talk after the _beep_. Until your number got allocated to someone else…”

She had started and couldn’t stop talking. She talked to her about this void that had settled in her gut despite her success, about this ache that seemed to refuse to go away and sent her ever closer to a precipice, about this dark veil surrounding the huntress's death (a veil she desperately wanted to tear up), and about her regret for not being there as she took her last dying breath.

Lydia only realized that someone was in front of the grave next to her when she had managed to calm her tears.

Stiles had followed the sound of sobbing. He didn’t have to see the face of the woman behind the tears to recognize her: Lydia was at Allison’s grave.

He was frozen and didn’t dare to move. He figured it was wiser to leave her on her own but realized that his feet were listening to another logic and had brought him closer to her. He was in front of the grave of a certain Madeleine Dubois and next to a Lydia who was even more beautiful than what he remembered.

He was staring in awe. He didn’t want to, but he couldn’t help it. After so many years he was still struck by her beauty. Stiles only seemed to remember how to use words when her gaze met his eyes.

“ _Vous voulez un tissu?_ ”

He cursed himself for asking such a dumb question, did she want a tissue? _What a great idea Stiles!_ She frowned and he figured that he must have said it wrong.

“ _Un_ _mouchoir_ , you mean? Because you know, _tissu_ doesn’t mean _tissue,_ it means _fabric_ , _mouchoir_ means _tissue_. Are you American?”

He was staring again, struck by her intelligence this time. That was his Lydia, his perfect and genius Lydia.

“Yeah, sorry…”

He laid his bouquet on the grave in front of him and gave her a tissue with shaky hands without waiting for an answer. She took it and dried her last tears, doing her best to hide her tear-stained face. Without knowing why, she started to stare at him, there was something with him that soothed her, something like familiarity.

“I’m sorry for your loss.” She told him after looking at the gravestone. This Madeleine had only died a few weeks ago.

“Oh… thanks.”

She was still looking at him. Lydia knew she shouldn’t wait for this conversation to go on, this man was obviously grieving. But she just couldn’t stop staring.

Stiles felt anxiety rising. Was he supposed to talk? He glanced quickly at the gravestone in front of him and figured he could maybe find a way to talk to her.

“My sister died in a car crash. It still feels like it was yesterday…” He stopped a few seconds, looking at her and wondering if he had made a mistake. “I’m sorry… I don’t want to bother you with that.”

“You’re not. Allison died ten years ago and It still feels like it was yesterday too. I was so far away when it happened. If I had been there, maybe… Maybe I could have done something.” Her voice faltered at the end of her sentence and she let out a sob.

“That’s what I keep telling myself too,” he said in a whisper.

It had seemed to relax him and he started to talk. The fact that Lydia had no idea about who he was or that he was talking about Allison was helping him. He could say whatever he wanted, while simultaneously lightening the burden he was carrying.

“We were really close, we went through so many things, we’ve had so many difficult times together. She died in the arms of my best friend. I know she meant the world to him… And it was all my fault.”

He was staring at the unknown name on the gravestone in front of him and felt tears in his eyes.

“She was so brave. I deprived a father of a daughter he adored. She was everything he had left. I deprived the world of a bold warrior, always willing to help anyone. She was beautiful, she had such a positive energy…” He was half lost in his memories, smiling sadly.

“When she smiled, she made everything look easier. She had the power to give us hope and the power to make people believe in themselves. Even when it all seemed to be lost. She died because she refused to let anyone get in the way of our right to life and happiness. I’m trying to follow her legacy, to find the one who took so much from us and make him pay. I’m just… I’m trying. It’s all I can do.”

The tears were rolling freely down his cheeks and he eventually sat cross-legged in front of the grave, still staring at the unknown name.

Silence fell on them. Lydia was paralyzed, she didn’t know what to do. She’d never dare hug him and knew she couldn’t leave. So, she began to talk.

“I wish I could go back in time. Go back ten years ago and never move away. If I could have gathered the strength, I could have made a difference, fixed things. Allison was the first and last person who really mattered in my life. The time we spent together was not so long but it’s as if I had waited my entire life to meet her, I was ready. Ever since she died there’s been a void inside of me, it’s taking up so much space…”

She was struggling to find the right words, and it was driving her insane. She always spoke with assurance and accurate words and she was reduced to banalities. There was no word that could be as meaningful as Allison.

In the distance, people were coming closer to them. A young boy ran toward them and stopped in his tracks next to the stranger.

Stiles saw them and figured they might be Madeleine Dubois’s family. Panic and anxiety rose again. He wanted so badly to keep talking to Lydia but couldn’t risk betraying himself if this boy or someone else asked him if he knew this Madeleine.

“I have to go.”

He was in a rush but managed somehow to keep his voice steady. He stood up and hesitated for a second before turning around to look at Lydia.

“Leaving was the right decision, it wouldn’t have changed anything if you had stayed. Your life is far too precious.”

Lydia was taken aback and watched him run away as the family came closer, halting in front of Madeleine’s grave. She repeated in her head the stranger’s enigmatic words over again and looked at him one last time. He had made a halt to watch her, running his hand nervously through his hair. Lydia began to stand up, but he left straight away.

She stayed a little while longer and was making her way toward the exit when she noticed something shiny on the ground. She took it and felt her heart stop for a moment.

It was a key chain.

A _Beacon Hills High_ key chain, her high school in California.

She wondered if it could be hers but knew very well that she had thrown away everything that could remind her of Beacon Hills.

Her mind was still with Allison and she put it in her pocket. She was nearing the cemetery gate and could hear the litanies the Dubois family were singing to Madeleine. She paused for a moment to hear them. She loved to hear those songs in French, its melody was fitting the sadness of the words.

Completely lost in the beauty of the voices, she suddenly realized something that pulled her brutally out of her reverie. Why was Madeleine’s brother unable to speak proper French? Why did he run away when he saw the family approaching? Something was off. Could he have lied to her? But why?

She froze when she felt the cold key chain under her fingers in her pocket. It wasn’t hers, it couldn’t be. She had found it on a path she hadn’t taken when she had come in.

Could it be possible that the American was in high school with her and wanted to see Allison’s grave? In that case, why didn’t he say anything? If he wasn’t Madeleine’s brother, who was he talking about? Allison? It seemed that he knew the person he was talking about and yet, Lydia didn’t recall him.

The same questions were rushing in her mind. The key chain wasn’t hers, that was a certainty and it hadn’t stayed on the ground long since there was no dirt on it. The famous Sherlock Holmes axiom was echoing in her mind _When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth_.

She sat on a bench, she couldn’t figure this thing out and intended on solving it. This mystery couldn’t hide its truth from her.

Lydia knew how her brain worked and knew that she wouldn’t be able to think about something else as long as she hadn’t got to the bottom of it.

When she was a kid, she once spent days trying to figure out a magic trick. When she finally understood on her own how the magician had done it, she was so proud that she invented her own version of the trick. Later, impossible equations kept her awake at night. She once had to learn Turkish in a few weeks to be able to read an important paper, whose English translation was raising more problems than it answered questions.

That’s why she took a room in a hotel facing the cemetery. She stayed the entire day looking through the window. If her hypothesis was correct, the stranger would come back since he didn’t really get to spend time at Allison’s grave.

The day went by, but she hadn’t seen anyone. She hushed the little voice in her head that mocked her, calling her crazy. She eventually went to bed to get some sleep.

She went back to Allison’s grave the following day at the same time and saw the young man kneeling in front of it. She hesitated for a second, took her courage in both hands and came closer to him.

“Are you Madeleine Dubois’s brother?”

“Wh…” he turned slowly around and understood when he laid his eyes on her. “Oh…”

“You don’t have a sister whose name is Madeleine Dubois, have you?”

“How did you…”

“You dropped this.” She cut him off, giving him the key chain back which he took without saying anything. “We know each other, don’t we? Were you talking about Allison yesterday?”

“Yeah… I’m not sure if we know each other. I mean, I know you but…”

She remained silent so he resumed talking.

“I’m Stiles. Scott’s best friend.”

At this name, she opened her eyes wide and sat on the gravestone next to him.

“Scott? Yes, I remember! Allison smiled whenever someone said his name… They were dating, right? And my former boyfriend ground his teeth every time he ran into him…”

She gave a nervous laugh at those memories and continued.

“You were his hyperactive friend who never left his side, right?”

“Well… yes…”

He smiled shyly and they began to talk, remembering high school and Allison. Lydia couldn’t quite understand why they didn’t have _this_ conversation yesterday, instead of the one they had. She recalled something he had said, something about being responsible for Allison’s death. She remained on her guard, knowing that curiosity would eventually win over when she would ask him the question stuck in the back of her mind.

Stiles, for his part, tried to not say too much. During high school, he had tried his best to protect her from this world, to make her stay away. Like most of his plans, it failed, given that Peter had attacked her. But there was a part of him that still hoped that she was able to move on without ever seeing the other side of the picture.

Deep in his thought, he hadn’t noticed that she had stopped talking and was staring at him. She seemed to be reluctant to ask him something. He encouraged her with a small nod and she opened her mouth, looking for the right words.

“Yesterday, you said she died because of you.”

This wasn’t a question. It was a statement and it took Stiles a little by surprise. He had to be careful.

“Well… More like if I hadn’t done something, the person who killed her wouldn’t have…”

He didn’t finish his sentence, looking at her, hoping she would get what he was failing to say. She stared at him in silence, feeling an old anger rising again inside of her. It was the same anger she had felt when nobody wanted to explain what exactly had happened to Allison. The same she had felt when she had been attacked. There was something else, she could have sworn there was something nobody was telling her. Something her Cartesian mind couldn’t determine.

“Look, I’m sick of being handled like a fragile doll, nobody has ever bothered to tell me the truth!”

She stood up and paced behind Stiles who kept his head down.

In her voice, Stiles could sense a rage, a fury that was intimidating him but at the same time, the feeling of helplessness showing at the end of her sentences made him want to take her in his arms and never let the world hurt her again.

Lydia couldn’t help it; her voice was getting louder and louder. If she let herself go, she knew she would have screamed until her throat turned raw.

 “I know there is something else but I don’t know what! How can a teenager get murdered? What does it have to do with you? And what do those messages on her gravestone mean? Hmm? And why, why do you all keep refusing to tell me anything?”

She was staring at him now but no answer came, he wouldn’t even look at her. She continued talking, telling him about this policeman who thought she was just some crazy teen. _Crazy_. This word had come up so many times after that. All the doctors and psychologists she had seen called her that, (in a more nuanced way of course) but it all came down to that: she was crazy. However, she knew what she had seen, the red eyes and the man’s fangs were still well engraved in her memory.

She sat down again while saying those last words, hiding her face in her hands to prevent Stiles from seeing her wet eyes.

That’s what Stiles had always feared. He was in agony. He understood that everything he had done, thinking he was protecting her, had actually had the opposite effect. She was choking because what she lived didn’t make any sense to her.

“No, it has nothing to do with crazy.”

He was now looking at her, distraught with pain, witnessing the distress in her eyes.

“Explain it to me then if you know something!”

Her anger had been replaced with weariness. Stiles felt a pang of sadness and reached toward her to take her hands to comfort her but he paused at the last moment. He wanted so badly to tell her everything, explain it all to her in order to help her find answers to her questions. But he knew very well how traumatic it could be for someone to learn that the world was actually ruled by supernatural laws and that the monsters that used to live only in our nightmares were walking the earth.

“Lydia, I’m not sure if I can tell you everything.”

He spoke very slowly without daring to look at her, knowing exactly that what he would find in her eyes would break his heart.

He heard her laughing faintly and closed his eyes.

“And why is that?”

“It’s more complicated than it seems. We often fought about this with Allison, and we never agreed.”

Lydia froze. Of course, Allison had other friends beside her, but realizing that she had secrets with someone else, secrets involving her… It felt as if someone was crushing her entire chest, she couldn’t breathe.

“About what?” She let out in a weak murmur.

“About what was happening.”

The guilt that had settled in Stiles chest was so strong that his words kept getting slower, weaker.

At those words, Lydia shivered.

“Allison knew?”

“That’s not what you think. We weren’t trying to hide the truth from you, we were trying to protect you. If you had known the truth about your attack…”

Lydia felt her blood turn cold and cut him off.

“The truth about my attack? So, there is a truth? And you knew it?”

Stiles was looking at the ground again and nodded slightly. He was chewing on his lips so strong that it wouldn’t have surprised him if he ended up finding the taste of blood in his mouth. He wished so badly that meeting Lydia after so many years would have turned out differently.

Lydia resumed, her tone now icy.

“What kind of truth?”

He didn’t answer, fearing the panic attack that was soon to be expected. Lydia repeated her question with a much more aggressive tone.

“Which kind of truth, Stiles?”

He eventually raised his head but couldn’t come up with anything to say. His mind, always rambling about anything, was remaining blank. The only thing echoing in his brain was the beating of his heart, too quick and too strong.

“Stiles!”

“You’re not crazy, okay? Everything you remember… That’s the truth. He’s a monster. A literal one.”

She didn’t say anything; he was crushed by her silence.

Stiles tried to examine her eyes, looking for an emotion or a reaction but she seemed lost in her thought. Without saying anything, she stood up and began to walk away.

“Lydia? Wait! Trust me, it was to protect you!”

She stopped and answered him without turning around. Her voice was shaking with so much anger that Stiles had to stay back after standing up.

“Protect me? From what? Since when has ignorance been better than knowledge?”

She started to walk again and Stiles followed her. He tried to catch her sleeve but she avoided him.

“Lydia, wait, I’m begging you…”

He was dying. She was right. _Of course,_ she was right. He blamed himself for so much.

“Lydia, please, let me explain…”

“No!”

She had finally stopped and turned around but Stiles would have rather talked to her without seeing her eyes. They were piercing straight through his skull, imbued with so much sadness and fury that he gave out a gasp and instinctively stepped back.

“No, you don’t get to explain yourself Stiles! Do you realize everything I had to go through? Don’t you think that at some point, it would have been okay to tell me that there was an explanation for my nightmares, for my psychosis? The worst… The worst part is that I blame Allison too now. She was the only good thing in my memories, the only one to comfort me. And you took her away from me!”

She was still boiling with anger but mentioning Allison filled her with such an incredible sadness that she had to stop. She didn’t want to hear what Stiles wanted to say but her strength was failing her, she could neither run away nor resume this argument, she needed to be alone.

Stiles felt it and went on with the most neutral tone he could master.

“Look, meet me at 5PM in the village square. We’ll talk, you’ll ask me all the questions you want or shout at me as much as you want… I’ll be there… come… or don’t. You’re free, you always have been.”

He walked away, glancing one last time at Allison’s grave, leaving Lydia alone in the cemetery. She stayed motionless for a while, frozen, not knowing what to do or what to think.

She eventually sat on Allison’s gravestone and stayed there until the church bells rang out twelve times. She listened to this sound, letting her sink into its depth with her eyes closed.

The bell rings out… _La cloche_ _sonne_ , in French. _Sonne_ … A word that sounded like the sun and like Allison.

She opened her eyes, looked at the sky, her back against the grave stone.

“Why, Allison, why?” was all she could whisper to the light breeze.

Another church rang out its bells twelve times. _Allison, sonne, sonne_ …

The sun made her eyes hurt so she closed them again.

 _Allison, sonne, sonne_ …

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, fun fact about languages and why they are sooooooo amazing:  
> When you say "sonne" in French you usally don't pronounce the last sylable and it can sounds like "sun" which is also the sound of the end of "Allison" AND do you know what "Sonne" means in German?? It means "sun"! Isn't that amazing? :)  
> Anyway, I found it so beautiful that Allison is slowly becoming one of my favourite name...
> 
> Please tell me what you thought about this chapter, what you hope for what comes next, what you liked or didn't liked, anything!
> 
> We'll breathe a little in the next chapter...


	4. Erinyes awakening

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING FOR THIS CHAPTER:
> 
> You can skip the italicized portion if you are uncomfortable with paedophiles insinuations. It's not clear but it's there. You won't miss something important, it's just the description of a murder.
> 
> I couldn't thank enough the people who left me comments and the amazing Eicartgeorge, I love you all!!

Lydia spent the afternoon walking, weighing her options, going over the two conversations she had with Stiles again. The anger was still boiling inside of her but she had questions. Lydia was a woman of science and she needed to have all the data before she could reach a conclusion.

Meeting Stiles was therefore an obligation; she owed it at least to herself.

She was afraid of what she could discover. Stiles had in his hands the missing piece of the puzzle she had been trying to recreate for years and she had the feeling that this little piece could change the entire picture.

And yet, there was this little voice in her head. Telling her tirelessly that she already knew what this picture looked like.

* * *

At 5PM Lydia was approaching the village square and saw that Stiles was already there. He was pacing and glancing at his watch almost every second while running his other hand nervously through his hair.

When his eyes eventually fell on her, he froze. He wanted to smile at her but there was something in the way she looked at him (in the way she _glared_ at him) that intimidated him.

They sat at a table outside a cafe; Stiles ordered a coffee and Lydia a mint syrup.

 “What kind of monster?” she asked after a long silence with no forewarning.

Stiles wasn’t sure what to do and hesitated a long moment. He knew she needed to know the truth but this question was forcing him to go straight to the point, leaving him no chance to make things look easier to accept.

“Look, I need to explain some things first.”

“No, just answer me.”

Stiles swallowed slowly, incapable of looking away from her eyes. He understood that he wouldn’t have any other choice but to answer her questions. One after the other. He surrendered and answered with the same attitude.

“A werewolf. His name is Peter Hale.”

“A werewolf?”

She flinched slightly but collected herself immediately, adding the idea that werewolves existed to her life paradigm. He nodded and she continued.

“How is that possible?”

“I guess… I don’t really know… All I know is that they are real and some, like Peter, were born werewolf and others are turned with a bite.”

“I _have_ been bitten.”

“Yeah but nothing happened to you after that, we kept watch on you for a while.”

“How come nothing happened?”

“We never found out.”

“So, it didn’t have any effect?”

“I don’t know.”

“I thought the point of this meeting was for you to answer my questions...”

She was slowly getting fed up with it. She was ready to acknowledge the existence of the supernatural but not without answers and Stiles was more than disappointing.

“Yes! I can explain everything: what happened, the unexplained disappearance and deaths, Allison… but there are so many things I still don’t know!”

She was unsure what to answer. Stiles was clearly nervous and she was wondering if he could feel as lost as she was.

“Very well. Tell me what happened to Allison then.”

He took a deep breath and began to tell her a story that kept sending shivers down her spine. Every single detail echoed something in her somehow. She had the feeling she was listening to the summary of a movie she watched while falling asleep.

When Stiles explained to her that she had been manipulated by Peter Hale to help him come back to life, she saw herself years ago waking up with bare feet, in her pajamas, and in the middle of nowhere.

When he explained that he, Scott and Allison were too late to save his own father; she remembered the feeling she once had in class. She was drowning and couldn’t stop from crying the entire day.

When he explained that something evil took control over him, committing murders with his own hands and face, she remembered feeling continually disorientated for weeks. Feeling like nothing was real, like she couldn’t tell her dreams and nightmares from the reality.

When he told her how Allison died, she recalled screaming with all of her strength in the street and recalled the pain she had felt in her stomach. Like she had been stabbed.

It was Lydia’s turn to swallow with difficulty. She had slowly turned pale.

“Does everything have something to do with Peter?” She had asked this question without knowing why, as if it was a certainty for her that the monster from her nightmares, this Peter Hale, was responsible for everything.

“Yeah, that’s what I found out.”

“And Scott? What did he have to do with it?”

“He was the first Peter bit. That’s what turned him.”

She remained silent for a little while and tried to hide the confusion in her mind.

 “When did you leave?” She finally asked.

“When I was 18, a few years after Allison’s death.”

“What made you leave?”

“I couldn’t afford college and I blamed myself for everything. My father’s death, your attack, Allison’s death and even Scott’s bite. If I hadn’t dragged him into the woods that night, nothing would have happened. I wanted to come here, say goodbye to Allison and find Peter to avenge everyone.”

Lydia didn’t reply.

Anxiety was rising in Stiles: he had sworn to himself to tell the truth, to be sincere, to tell her everything and to lower his protections to let her in. She had to know everything he knew. But dwelling on all of that was painful and he felt as if he was in front of the Lydia he knew in high school, the one who would have died instead of letting her emotions show, the _cold-hearted queen_ as the gossipers used to call her.

But Stiles knew. He knew that she was so much more than that, so much more than the mask she was currently wearing and it was slowly killing him to see her like that.

“What is that? I saw it somewhere.”

She had seen his tattoo and caught his forearm.

“Where?”

“A few weeks ago, in a cafe. I thought it was an arrow and it made me think about Allison. That’s what brought me here.”

“You were in my cafe?”

He couldn’t believe it, she had been there and he hadn’t seen her?

“What is it?”

She had knowingly evaded the question. Speaking about her life to someone who had just turned her life and view of things upside down was out of the question.

“It’s Japanese, it means _self._ It reminds me that I’m myself… If that makes sense… Sometimes I wake up and I don’t know if it’s real or if I’m hallucinating. It helps me concentrate. And the arrow is Allison. I always admired her courage and devotion. I want to make her death… I don’t want her to be dead for nothing. She died for me, to save me.”

He was struggling to find words, struggling against sobs that seemed to seek for an escape.

“I want to live for her and kill the monster who stole our lives.”

He had said this last sentence in a more confident tone. His voice was devoid of tears but filled with a controlled anger. Lydia let the silence stretch a little longer and tried to read in his eyes where this sudden confidence could have come from.

She resumed with a shaky voice.

“Did I really resurrect this monster?”

Stiles nodded faintly without daring to meet her gaze. She slowly turned her eyes away.

“I don’t remember anything. When my mother had wanted to move out of the country at the end of sophomore year, I knew it had something to do with my attack but I didn’t know what exactly. Did she know about that?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

They remained quiet for a while and Lydia broke the silence to say something she never told anyone, fearing to hear the word _crazy_ again.

“I felt Allison’s death…”

It had been more a whisper and Stiles had to come closer to hear her. Lydia had a fixed stare, it looked like she wasn’t gazing at anything in peculiar; she was lost in her memory.

“I was coming back home, walking down the street when I felt a lump in my throat. I screamed Allison’s name without knowing why. I had never screamed so loud… It felt like someone had stabbed me…”

Stiles nodded and said something but Lydia wasn’t listening.

She wanted to cry, to give way to her emotions but she couldn’t. She was wondering what made her confide in this stranger, she didn’t trust him yet and her anger was still there. But she felt that it helped her feel better so, she continued.

“And there is this nightmare. I don’t know how many times I had it. I stopped counting… I’m in a maze or something like that…”

She was speaking faster; her breath was halting as if she was living what she was telling him.

“I want to go out. I’m looking for the way out and I see a light. I’m heading for it but the daylight turns into two big red dots… I run in the opposite direction, I jump over empty spaces, walls, I rush down stairs after stairs. I want to stop but I can’t… He could catch me if I did… I don’t know what he is, what _it_ is. It sometimes looks like a wolf, sometimes like a man with sharp teeth… When he catches me, he empties me; I don’t know how to explain it…”

She seemed to slowly break herself out of her trance and realised that Stiles had took her hands in his. She wanted to take her hands back and shout at him but saw blood on her fingers. She had hurt them against the splinters of the wooden table she was scratching and Stiles had to make her stop.

A light bubble of warmth seemed to suddenly chase away the void she had started to feel.

“It’s stupid, isn’t it?” she asked, faking a laugh.

“No, not really, no.”

His gaze was so soft that she couldn’t help but relax her face.

He wanted to rid her of her fears, he knew first hand that nightmares could feel as tangible as reality.

They stayed like that for a little while, wrapped in a comfortable silence. Lydia could feel some of the weight on her shoulder vanish and missed the contact with his hands as soon as he moved them away.

“Why didn’t you tell me anything in high school? You all knew what was going on and decided that I didn’t deserve to know?”

“No, it wasn’t like that, I swear… I genuinely believed I was protecting you. If it makes you feel any better... Allison, Scott, and I...we disagreed a lot on that. Allison wanted to tell you about all of it, but I-” He sighed. “I kept telling her that if you didn't know, you'd be safe. Knowing...it ruined the lives of everyone involved.”

She tried to laugh to emphasize the irony of it but her laugh got caught in her throat.

“I can’t say that not knowing has improved my life…”

“I’m sorry… I truly believed I was helping.”

“You should have listened to Allison.”

“Yeah… I realize that now,” he said with a sad smile, “You’re right. Of course, you’re right. You’ve always been the smartest of us.”

He lost himself in a distant memory and Lydia was left wondering.

“What do you mean?”

Stiles let out an embarrassed laugh. His point wasn’t to confess to the obsessional love he had felt for her, to the caring attention he had always had toward her. When he was 15, he knew all about the way she kept hiding herself, about how she kept lowering her intelligence to remain within the norm.

“I always knew you would win a Nobel prize or something amazing like that. You always had the answer in class but never raised your hand. I could hear you whisper every answer. I never sat too far away from you…” he said smiling, slightly embarrassed about this confession. “And I know you sometimes invented theorems to solve equations. Ms. Flemming used to get so pissed when you did that…”

They both quietly laughed at that memory.

“I would love to tell her that I ended up proving some of those theorems a few years ago!”

Lydia caught herself joining in the conversation. The mere mention of her passion had been enough to lighten her mood and she knew that a treacherous smile was slowly creeping on her lips. She could read relief in Stiles’s eyes.

“I have no doubt about that.”

They talked a long time about her research. Stiles didn’t understand anything but kept asking her questions; she was talking with such passion that it was like being in seventh heaven for him to see her like that. He listened in awe, not wanting her to stop.

But after a while, she paused and her smile vanished.

“If I hadn’t been this concerned about my reputation… Maybe we would have met sooner. And maybe…”

“No, Lydia.” He had cut her off. He knew exactly what she was doing: she was going to blame herself, leading them to talk about Allison and he wanted to keep that gorgeous smile on her lips at any cost. “It wouldn’t have changed anything, okay? If Peter wasn’t the psychotic narcissist he is, always on the prowl for blood and power, it would have changed everything. But you had to be you. None of this is your fault.”

Stiles instinctively took her hands again, drawing comforting circles with his thumbs on her fingers and keeping his voice as soft as possible. She was overcome with calm and smiled shyly, her lips pressed tightly together and her emerald green eyes filled with gratitude. He realized what he was doing and dropped her hands as fast as if he had come too close to a flame.

Lydia repressed a laugh when she saw his cheeks turning red. Anger seemed to progressively evaporate and she blamed herself for being resentful of Allison. She made the silent promise to apologise to her friend before leaving.

The afternoon was gradually turning into early evening and the air was breathable again, less humid. The sun was bathing the streets in warm orange colours. Linen was hanging in the windows, adding to the dry surrounding air nice smells of detergent and awaking memories of home and childhood. Kids were playing outside, filling the streets with their laughs.

The atmosphere was nothing but happiness, summer and vacations. It contrasted brutally with the heaviness of their conversation and the weight in their eyes.

Time went by; they kept talking.

Lydia kept asking questions to know precisely what kind of supernatural creatures crossed their paths through the years, trying to understand how it was scientifically possible. She also tried to make out the event’s chronology to find a meaning behind everything she had been through. Completing the puzzle was filling her with happiness. As unbelievable as it seemed, it made sense to her.

One question remained however. Why had she been aware of everything that happened while being on another continent? Stiles didn’t have any answer and it tormented her maybe even more than figuring out the werewolf metabolism.

Soon enough, their empty stomachs started to growl. They decided to stay for dinner but nervously laughed when the waiter brought them the menus: everything was written in the local dialect and nothing looked familiar.

Lydia tried to ask the waiter for guidance but he pretended to not understand what she was saying. Which made Stiles boil with anger given that he was sure she could speak better French than this asshole. They tried to google the names but couldn’t find any signal.

Lydia was ready to surrender and leave when Stiles had the most ridiculous idea and suggested they could choose the dishes that sounded more appetizing.

She was hard to convince but eventually gave up for the sake of her stomach.

“What?” She asked after pronouncing every dish on the menu.

"Nothing..." Stiles closed his mouth and tried to stop staring at her. "It's just... Everything sounds tasty in your mouth... I mean pronounced like that..."

Lydia blinked, not knowing how to reply to that. Was he flirting with her? She had no time to think about a biting remark because the waiter came back and they had to make a choice.

When he brought them what their ordered, Stiles raised an interrogatory eyebrow to Lydia who was trying to conceal a laugh behind her hand. She had something with what looked like pork and beef feet. Stiles’s plate on the other hand had a terrible smell. He learned afterwards that is was mutton tripe. As it turned out, red wine made both dishes perfectly acceptable. They drank one bottle between the two of them and ordered another one.

Lydia felt wonderful. She didn’t know if the warmth she was feeling could be attributed to the wine or to happiness but if she was being honest, she didn’t care. The main thing was: she was euphoric.

“Okay, new question… What did you see the last time you went to the movies?”

“I don’t really go to the movies.”

Stiles was staring at her, mouth agape.

“Never?”

“Well, sometimes… But I realized that I didn’t really like that, that I was going because that’s what people expect from you and not because I enjoyed it. So, I tend not to go if I can help it.”

Stiles (an incredulous expression printed on his face) still hadn’t closed his mouth. Lydia tried to close his jaw from her fingertip and laughed. It seemed to shake him out of his lethargy.

“But why? What do you do then?”

“I read. I like to read. You have the time to truly understand, you think, you play with your imagination. With a movie, you have to see things with the director’s eyes and I hate when people try to impose things on me.”

She took another sip of wine a small smile on her lips without breaking eye contact with a dazed Stiles.

“And you?” she resumed, “What kind of movies do you like?”

“Star Wars!”

The lack of hesitation and his rush made her smile even more. “Oh really?”

She raised an eyebrow, faking a surprised look but then, she stared at him wide-eyed suddenly realizing something.

“Wait a minute… Were you the one who kept leaving drawings of Han and a redhead Leia in my locker? With sentences like _Be the Leia to my Han for prom_?”

“God no…” he answered frowning, “I had a different style. I would rather join the Lacrosse team to get your attention you know… And I would never draw you as a redhead!”

“You were on the Lacrosse team?” She asked while trying to hide her smile behind her napkin.

“Oh yeah totally! You never saw me? I was so good though at like… cheering, warming the bench, giving water to the other players… all that stuff you know!”

He was smirking and Lydia couldn’t help but laugh. They were wrapped in a comfortable silence, enjoying the warmth settling around them.

Lydia eventually broke the silence.

“Why Star Wars?”

“I don’t really know… I’ve always loved it. It’s not just another science fiction saga with heroes and adventures. Well… there are heroes and adventures, but it’s way more than that. They all fight for what they believe is good, even Darth Vador. But at the same time, they make mistakes, they were all damaged in some way. Their choices made them who they are, even the bad ones. It’s a tragedy, a story about politics, choices and vengeance. I’m sure someone wiser than me would find a philosophy of life with it.”

He stopped, beside himself with passion and stared at Lydia whose gaze was fixated on him.

“Wait, don’t tell me you never watched the movies…” he said frowning.

“Oh no, I did! It’s just… I’ve heard about those people who lived, dreamed, breathed Star Wars but I’ve always thought it was more like a myth.”  She paused, smirking. “But I get it… You could almost convince me to watch them with you…” 

She was now smiling and biting her lower lip, slightly titling her head and Stiles was speechless. He was thrown by this flirty version of Lydia. _Wait a minute, was she flirting with him?_ He couldn’t get rid of the vision of her small frame snuggled up against his side under a warm blanket with popcorn and the music of the opening credits in the background.

He suddenly became conscious of the flush on his cheeks and tried to stare at anything that wasn’t her burning green gaze or the showing lace at her blouse’s cleavage.

They kept talking for a long while. Lydia tried to explain some mathematical theories, talked about physics and philosophy while Stiles asked questions and realized that her knowledge had no boundaries. He was clever but the wine wasn’t helping so Lydia used several napkins to draw diagrams. Stiles didn’t know it was even possible to worship her more than he already did.

Their hands kept brushing when they would grab at the same time their glass or the bottle, sending a rush of blood and electricity down their entire bodies. Sometimes, the brush would linger a little too long. His thumb would stroke her palm or she would slightly intertwine their fingertips but they would quickly take their hands away after a few seconds.

Happiness could be read on their faces, heard in the clear notes of their laughs. As if the entire day and the day before hadn’t existed, as if their past were blank pages that they could fill with whatever they wanted.

But the spell broke when the waiter came to tell them that his shift was coming to an end and that they needed to pay. They paid, stood up and started to walk away, leaving their smiles behind them to wear the masks that had been hardening their faces for so many years.

They exchanged their phone numbers and promised each other to stay in touch while walking back to Lydia’s hotel.

“Are you leaving tomorrow?” she asked after a few minutes of silence.

“Yeah. I’ve got a new lead for…”

He cut himself off, not wanting to bring Peter Hale back in the conversation but the atmosphere had been already altered. Lydia felt it, felt the void inside of her again and moved away from his arm that she had linked with hers.

“You’ll be careful, right?”

“Yeah…”

Silence fell on them again by the time they reached Lydia’s hotel. Speechless, they stared at each other for a little while, not knowing what to do, what to say. Lydia eventually took him in her arms, wishing him good night and opened the door.

Stiles’s gaze stayed on her until she disappeared in the lobby. He had wanted to ask her to come with him but knew it would have been a bad idea so, he hadn’t said anything. He turned around and started to walk away, sighing in the night and wondering if he would be able to fall asleep tonight. It would be a miracle if he would.

That night, Lydia woke up crying in her hotel room. She’d had her nightmare once again and the monster was human this time. She was sitting against a wall in a small path, naked, with her stomach cut opened and her guts streaming down the gutter. The monster was devouring her entrails, smiling at her with a toothy grin. She couldn’t do anything, couldn’t move a single limb. She was struggling to keep her eyes opened but it took too much of her energy and she needed that energy to beg him to stop. Which she didn’t. He whispered awful things in her hear. She couldn’t remember what.

When she woke up, a new rage had settled in her. Some sort of heat was spreading inside her chest. Not the comfortable but fleeting warmth she had felt the entire evening. It was something permanent, cruel, colder maybe. Revenge. 

Stiles’s revelations and her nightmare mingled. She had to go out on her balcony to breathe the night fresh air but had forgotten that her room was facing the cemetery. From her spot, she could see Allison’s grave.

She grabbed her phone and sent a text to Stiles, telling him that she would come with him to find Peter if he wanted her to. The second after hitting _send_ , she received a plain _Okay._

She wanted to find him, make him pay. And if she had to go through it to feel warm, to feel blood flowing in her veins, she would take it. She couldn’t go back to work anyway: she couldn’t see herself take back her life where she left it. Not when she knew that the monster from her nightmare was real and that Allison wasn’t avenged.

* * *

 

_When the police questioned her, the neighbour maintained that she had heard noises during the night. She hadn’t had the reaction to look at the time but when she went out, it was pitch dark. The air was icy and the light of the full moon intensified the whiteness of her breath, each exhalation turning into curls of smoke before vanishing into the night. She had tightened her robe to feel warmer. She wasn’t positive about what exactly she had been hearing. She couldn’t tell if those cries belonged to a dog, a wolf or a human being, just like cats can sometimes imitate the cry of a new-born baby. They were several of them, fighting. Her only certainty was that there were sounds of flesh, bodies thrown against walls. They were whining, groaning. It had sent a shiver down her spine, so she had gone back inside. This nice woman was well known for her psychotic disorders. No action was taken about her call._

_The taste of blood in his mouth was the only thing that prompted him to crawl out of his den. The taste of the victory he just crushed. At his feet were four gutted corpses: animals? humans? What did it matter? Blood and flesh are the same._

_He went out, it had been ages since he had felt such a surge of energy. Knowing where it was coming from was unimportant. Something was warming him from the inside and that thing was keeping him alive. He had no idea whether he was walking on four feet or two, he couldn’t tell the difference. He didn’t even know what came out of his mouth when he uttered sounds._

_The street turned left and that’s when he saw her. She must have been 15 years old, beautiful strawberry blond hair and green eyes. The teenager stopped in her track when she saw him, visibly scared. He had no idea what made him scary but he loved that horrified look in the eyes of the people who crossed his path._

_Suddenly, the urge of tasting her felt too strong. She was easy to catch; her flesh was tender and easily ripped up. She was still alive when he ate her intestine. He tried to soothe her, telling her how beautiful she was, that he was in love with her, that all of this was nothing but natural. He managed to make her quiet. Or maybe had she eventually died? That didn’t really matter._

_He brought the corpse back in his path and piled it up above the other corpses, guessing that birds and rats would take over._

_One last time, he howled to the moon before slipping further into the darkness._

* * *

Stiles didn’t sleep a lot that night. He had waited in his car until the influence of wine wore off. He couldn’t help but think that he should have told her something else, but what? Something was missing. His entire teenage years had been spent admiring her, protecting her from afar. She had been the main point of his existence without knowing it. With distance and years, his mind had only turned her into some sort of mythical creature, a gorgeous and unapproachable goddess, barely human.

Seeing her without expecting it, talking to her, giving everything away within a few hours seemed now surreal. Had it truly happened? No, it was probably another trick; his mind was playing him once again. A few hours and she had disappeared. It was a dream, nothing more. It wasn’t _possible_ , he had thought about this moment a thousand times and hadn’t told her a single thing he wanted to tell her. He was pondering while staring at the moon, a full moon that was lighting up the village in black and white.

He fell asleep until the buzzing of his phone woke him up. He had a message. From Lydia. His heart leaped in his throat, she wanted to come with him? Without thinking about anything, he answered “okay” while knowing that he shouldn’t have answered at all.

Several emotions were crossing his mind but there was no way he could tell them apart since they all seemed to turn into warmth waves overwhelming him when he recalled her smile, her laugh. He was the personification of bliss: sitting in his car, smiling at the moon, the eyes full of stars and the stomach full of butterflies.

He fell asleep again but the feeling of an impending disaster woke him up. Something inside of him was telling him that he had irrevocably doomed her. He could have backed up, could have left when he had seen her at the cemetery. She would have gone home, had a chance for a normal life. What was he giving her if not a search he knew could last forever? A tragic destiny without redemption?

He didn’t fall asleep again after that. He watched the sun rising in the sky. He could leave, there was still time. He didn’t. Instead, he wrote her to meet him at his car at seven. The thought of the disaster to come was still tightening his chest when he bought them two coffees and something to eat. He was selfish, always had been. He cursed himself for that; his father and Allison had died because of that! What if Lydia died too?

But when he saw her coming from afar, all his thought faded away. The sight of her had hushed the voices in his head. He only felt the same adoration he had always felt for her.

After they drank their coffees and ate, they went away. They had a few days trip ahead of them: Stiles’s new lead would take them to Spain, to a village in the middle of the country. After his last fruitless chase, he had found a young man waiting for him in front of his hotel. The man had told him that a woman from Peter’s family wanted to meet him, he had given him all the information and had vanished in the night before Stiles could ask any questions. He was still suspicious but it was his only lead given his source couldn’t be reached.

Before leaving the village, they went one last time to the cemetery to make their goodbyes to Allison. They then made a stop in the nearer big city for Lydia who had to buy some clothes and send an email to her university.

Stiles tried to convince her to go back home but she refused. She finally understood those tragic heroines who only lived for vengeance, who could only breathe after their act had been done. She was Antigone, Electra, she was all of those Greeks goddesses filled with the urge to make the men pay, the ones who had scorned them. She was thrusting with justice and blood. Everything else was an illusion. Vengeance gave her a landmark, a magnetic north and she had no desire to give it up. Not after spending so many years losing herself in her own existence.

She didn’t flinch when she sent her email, putting this part of her life behind her. Since the day before, she finally felt alive. Emotions, genuine emotions, were rushing inside of her and even if she couldn’t name them or tell them apart, she knew they didn’t compare to what she had been feeling for the last ten years. She wasn’t cold anymore, not like before. It didn’t feel like tomorrow would be the same day as yesterday because she didn’t know what the future held. It gave her shivers that woke her up from what seemed to be a long sleep, a long coma. She had been sleeping with opened eyes, surviving without living.

They bought everything necessary and got back into the car. After more than two decades spent living in the same world, breathing the same suffocating air, they had found each other. They had stroke their matches above Allison’s grave, merging their pain to create a dangerous and eternal fire, a thousand years old fire. Together they had awakened the Erinyes, children of the Earth and the Sky, born from the primordial Chaos to restore justice.

Their car headed towards the sun. They looked at each other one last time before crossing the exit sign of the town. They recognized in the gaze of the other the same determination, the one that had driven Orestes crazy and that would make Peter beg for mercy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please, please, please leave a comment if you liked it or if you have any remark, it makes me so happy every time :) 
> 
> Next: Spain and stops on the road...
> 
> I'm @twLucy31 on twitter if you want to chat!


	5. Sheltered

Some agitation had taken hold of Stiles. They had been driving for more than half a day and had reached the mountains. Until then, they had been able to count on the reassuring presence of the radio. Not anymore.

Lydia was currently driving, leaving Stiles with nothing to distract him from his thoughts. He had been talking about his stay in London for the past few minutes, making rambling comments about how the English were different from the Americans. He would have loved to stop talking but he couldn’t help it, the silence was too uncomfortable for him.

During the firsts hours, Stiles had told Lydia all about his discoveries and his various leads. But this conversation had eventually come to an end and the excitation they had felt when they had left Marvejols had slowly faded. They both had to quietly face their decision and their consequences.

Lydia had no regrets, as surprising as it was for her. But she realized she barely knew Stiles and yet, she was almost blindly following him. This wasn’t like her. Nor was her behaviour from last night or how physically close she allowed him to be.

She watched him drive and wondered what it was with him that hypnotized her like that. He wasn’t built like the men who usually caught her eye and his tendency to let chance and luck guide him was making her anxious to no end.

But there was something in the way he had listened to her talking about her researches and about her nightmares that had mesmerized her. She had felt like his stare wasn’t just on her. It had been inside of her, anchoring himself deeper and deeper. Some sort of aura was surrounding him. There was a fleeting flame in his gaze sometimes. Something that made him shine brightly and drew her always closer to him. Like a firefly looking for the tiniest source of light, looking for anything that could push the darkness away.

Music was filling the blanks but when it was no longer an option, some sort of awkwardness settled between them.

That’s when Stiles had started to talk about the different cities he had lived in. He slipped a few jokes between two comments and swore he would have shut up if she would have sent him the tiniest bored glare… But the thing is, she kept slightly curling her lips, and it was enough encouragement for him to ramble on and on.

Her discreet smiles turned into actual replies and after a while, there wasn’t anything easier than talking to each other. Her quick wit had an answer for each sarcastic remark he was throwing at her. They were both more and more at ease and were eventually able to talk about their lives, jobs, travels, hopes and disillusions without having to seek help in a bottle of wine.

Stiles wanted to talk about her nightmares again. He wanted to reassure her and promise her that he would do anything in his power to make them stop. He would rid her nights from terror even if he had to die for it.

But those words stayed trapped in his throat. He didn’t want to bring it up again. Not when she looked so relaxed. It was hard for him to repress his inquisitive nature... his need to unravel every mystery. God knows Lydia Martin was the biggest mystery of all, and he wanted to relearn everything there was to know about her. That started with learning how far was too far when these nightmares were concerned, and he was already worried he may have crossed a line last night.

They entered a small village as evening fell. It was quiet in the car again. They watched the sun progressively set without even trying to turn the radio on.

Lydia yawned for the fourth time right after Stiles and they decided to stop for the night. The only hotel in sight appeared to have witnessed the two world wars, but it was too late to keep driving on the small roads. They took the first room they were offered.

Stiles settled in the armchair, letting Lydia sleep in the bed. She promised to drive more on the next day and to let him have the bed in the next hotel.

As it turned out, neither of them were able to sleep that night. Their room couldn’t be locked and it seemed that someone had tried to attack their window several times from the outside. They spent the night on the lookout for any unusual noise after someone had barged in their room. It was an old man in nothing more than a bathrobe. He was stinking of alcohol and seemed to be mad at them for some reason. After that, they talked quietly to each other and made a game out of trying to identify each sound they heard. The hallway was always filled with noises: laughs, fights, doors banging and something Stiles was sure sounded like a martinet.

 

“A martinet?'” asked an incredulous Lydia.

 

“Yeah, it's a type of whip. Some French parents use it to punish their children.”

 

“I'm well aware of what a martinet is, Stiles,” with a smirk, she added, “I'm also well aware that it's not _just_ a punitive device for children in France.”

 

“What are you...wait...Oh my God! No! Not like that,” he tried to defend himself. He let out a sigh. “It's a long story, but it just so happens that I do a lot of googling when I can't sleep.”

 

Lydia was now nodding with a far too amused look on her face. “Oh... _googling._ Is that what Americans are calling it these days?”

 

“Stop it,” he groaned, mostly at himself. “I mean, you knew what it was too.”

 

“Oh, I read,” she told him confidently. “And yeah...sure...let's say it's a martinet.”

 

They giggled and spent the rest of the night talking, startling at any strange sound.

They managed to sleep a few hours but didn’t stay too long after eating their breakfast. The atmosphere in the car was less tense than the day before. They hadn’t slept much and chuckled nervously while recalling their night in this strange hotel.

They took turns driving. Every two or three hours, they would stop to stock up on caffeine, then switch places to allow the previous driver to rest in the passenger seat.

It was a beautiful day. The intense blue of the sky was the definition of azure. There wasn’t a single cloud on the horizon. Lydia was driving on a deserted road with her left arm outside of the window and sunglasses on her nose.

The last time they had stopped, they had bought a few CDs. Among the various Spanish folk bands, Lydia had found an old Adele album. Stiles had sent her a quizzical look but surprisingly didn’t make any comment.

She was humming quietly along to the lyrics while trying to keep the volume at it's minimum to avoid waking Stiles. He'd made a pillow out of his jacket and had fallen asleep with his head against the window.

When Lydia’s gaze fell on him, she could feel this aura around him filling their small rental car. She couldn’t help but marvel at his profile. He looked so serene and peaceful that his face seemed to be carved in marble.

The sun was barely brushing against him, emphasizing his bone structure and casting delicate shadows of his cheekbones, jaw and turned up nose. She hadn’t noticed until then his incredibly long eyelashes. The ones responsible for this gaze that made her momentarily forget how to calculate the root of the easiest polynomial. She couldn’t help but smile every time his parted lips let out a few snores.

When she got out of the car to fill the tank, she couldn't stop herself from staring at him through the window. She caught herself counting the moles scattered on his face and seeming to sink deeper on his chest. Her mind was surely somewhere else when she realized she was nibbling at her lips while staring at his long, elegant fingers and his arms with slightly defined muscles.

As she got back in the car, she took a few deep breaths, trying to pull herself together being as quiet as she could. She couldn’t allow herself to have such thoughts. This wasn’t her and this wasn’t the reason why she had chosen to follow him. Her new mantra was showing her the right way and she had to follow it: Peter had to pay. Nothing else mattered.

And just like that, her smile vanished. Her cheeks exchanged their red shade for a paler one.

She hadn’t noticed that the snoring had stopped. Stiles was awake, observing her.

A few of her locks had escaped her complicated braid to fly outside the opened window. With this light, her hair had this orange shade of red and contrasted perfectly with the blue of the sky. The wind was funnelling into her blouse, letting him sometimes catch a glimpse at the lace on her bra.

He had saw her brief smile before her face had turned into stone again, wringing his heart in the process. She was gorgeous. Her smile carried promises of lazy mornings spent in bed until noon, of walks with bare feet on the grass, of warm pancakes and popcorn smells. He wanted more than anything to allow her to keep this smile forever.

But they had something to do, someone to find. It was the only way she could wear that smile again. They only had to find him. If that was even possible.

It was his turn to feel the joy leave his lips and his face. He sat up, drawing her attention on him. With a neutral tone, she told him they were almost reaching their next stop. He nodded while looking at the unfolding landscape through the window.

The area was barely inhabited and the few hotels they found were long closed. They only managed to find available rooms in a Catholic convent. They would have to pay for two rooms since they weren't married or even related. With their strength failing them, the mere thought of getting back into the car to drive another hour to _maybe_ find something cheaper was exhausting enough. With a sigh, Stiles begrudgingly handed the money over.

 

Their rooms were adjacent and Lydia noticed really quickly how thin the walls were when she heard Stiles humming one of the Adele songs she was listening to in the car. She tried to stifle her laugh and eventually pressed an ear to the wall.

Lydia heard a muffled sound followed by a curse. He had probably stumbled against his backpack with his eyes closed while trying to reach a high note. She recognized the slam of a door and felt her heart rate increase realizing that he might have left his room to enter hers.

She was still laughing but moved away quickly from the wall when someone knocked on her door. She tried to appear composed while tidying her hair and opened the door. Stiles was there, smiling like it was the most natural thing he could do and totally unaware of what just happened.

“Could you give me the map? I’d like to check something for tomorrow.”

Lydia nodded, biting her cheek to avoid laughing. She went through her purse and gave him the map with the Adele CD at the same time.

The look of disbelief in his eyes was quickly replaced by understanding and embarrassment. His whole face and neck turned red. He kept opening and closing his mouth like a fish out of water. Lydia couldn’t contain her laugh anymore and it finally bubbled out of her. The sound surprised her. She realized she hadn’t laughed this hard in ages, and it felt good. It felt _incredible_. Her stomach hurt in a delicious way, and the tears rolling down her cheeks and into her mouth had never tasted so much like freedom. And it wasn’t even that funny. Oh God, she was tired…

When she was able to speak again, even her voice sounded warmer.

“It’s just to help you practice… To reach those high notes…”

She dried her wet eyes, trying to stare at something else than his amber eyes that seemed to light another fire in her stomach. Her lips drew on her face the most innocent smile Stiles had ever seen. He just smiled, shaking his head.

“I see…”

“But watch out, walls are not that thick. Old neighbours could complain.”

Lydia had leaned against the door, still smiling while Stiles kept staring at her and shaking his head again.

“Well, thanks for the advice. I’m gonna go and… keep practicing. Don’t hesitate to sing the chorus with me. Could be fun…”

She laughed through her nose but couldn’t find anything to reply. The intensity of his gaze on her was making her nervous. She eventually broke the silence.

“I’m gonna take a shower. We meet in an hour for dinner?”

He nodded and smiled one last time before going back into his room. His hand was on the handle of his door when he paused. He looked toward Lydia’s door which was now closed. An elderly couple went past behind him, staring and frowning at him. He felt like a love-struck teenager and it was most probably written all over his face. He greeted them and ended up opening his door. Right after scientist-Lydia, joking-Lydia was definitely his favourite.

That night, Lydia screamed and cried herself awake. As fast as he could, Stiles stumbled out of his room but a nun had rushed to her aid, making him understand to go back into his room. He reluctantly complied but pressed his ear against the wall as soon as he was inside, waiting for the nun to be gone.

He heard muffled voices and finally the slam of the door. He had trouble concealing the concern in his voice.

“Hey Lydia? Are you okay? What was it? A nightmare?”

“Yeah… But it’s alright now… It’s gone…”

“Lydia…”

She didn’t answer but he could hear her snuffle and breathe a little too loud for somebody who claimed to be alright.

“Lydia, come on… You can tell me anything. I know what it’s like to have nightmares and not know if you are awake or still asleep. When I was… possessed… It was like that every night. Sometimes even during class…”

He sat on the floor, his head against the wall and his gaze staring at the ceiling plunged into darkness.

“I opened my eyes and was so sure I was awake but then something would happen… And I woke up again… And again, and again… Until I didn’t... Not for several weeks. So many people had died...”

He took his head in his hands and dried his eyes. It still felt like it was yesterday and he could still feel the taste of blood in his mouth and still felt as nauseous as he had felt when he had realized everything that had happened.

There wasn’t any noise on the other side of the wall. Maybe Lydia wasn’t listening anymore and had fallen asleep.

“Lydia? Are you still with me?”

“Yeah…”

Her voice was closer to the wall. Stiles could hear her fidget so he kept quiet, figuring she was reluctant to ask him something.

“D… Does it still happen?”

“No. But I still have this reflex to count my fingers sometimes to be sure I’m awake.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ve read somewhere that you couldn’t read or count in your dreams. You always have more fingers. I don’t know if that’s true but it works. It helps me relax.”

“That’s really smart.”

A small and sad smile crept on his lips. He let the silence stretch a little.

“Are you feeling better?”

“No…”

She had waited a little before answering. Stiles could hear her voice at his ear level now and pictured her in the same position he was. Their heads and shoulders at the same height, leaning on each other. She resumed after a few seconds.

“The images… It always takes time before they leave my mind. Sometimes, they are more than images, I… I feel his fingers, his claws and teeth on my skin.”

She choked back her tears and Stiles wanted nothing more than to hold her in his arms. But he felt that he would break some fragile balance if he stood up. He closed his eyes, letting her speak.

“I always relive the formal night. On the Lacrosse field. He throws himself at me and…”

Lydia remained silent a few seconds, looking for the right words to describe what she was failing to name. Once again, there were none.

“But it’s different in my nightmares. I’m always on that path, this maze.”

“How does it end?”

Stiles had waited before asking, making sure she was done.

“I… I don’t know… It’s like… like I was witnessing a part of a scene… like it was really happening somewhere.”

A shiver down his spine made him keep quiet about the idea that it was maybe true.

“When we find him, it will stop.”

“I hope so.”

Her tone had hardened again, her voice devoid of sob.

“You wanna try to sleep now, Lyds?”

The nickname surprised them both and they both felt blood rushing in their ears. They held their breath and waited for the other one to react. Lydia eventually realized she had to answer something.

“No… Can we talk a little more?”

“Yeah of course.”

They talked a while longer, reassuring each other with comforting words. Anxiety and tiredness had overwhelmed them and after a while, without even noticing it, they weren’t making sense anymore. Their syntax began to be more and more incorrect and by the end, they weren’t even able to speak in complete sentences.

And yet, they kept replying to the other, understanding each other in every sense of the word.

In the heart of this cold night, in this impersonal hotel, they finally had the feeling that the world wasn’t looking their way anymore. Leaving them alone. Sheltered. Letting them warm each other up and nursing their wounds.

They took their pillows and blanket to keep talking on the floor. Going in the other’s room didn’t even cross their tired minds. They were nesting inside the other in a way that felt more intimate than anything else. She was opening her soul to him and Stiles was drunk on her. He took everything she gave him, keeping it carefully inside of him and making sure he was reciprocating.

They finally fell asleep like that, one hand reaching for the other but only finding the coldness of the wall.

The next morning, they met downstairs in the breakfast room. They didn’t say much but smiled at each other every time their eyes met.

Stiles watched her talking with their table neighbour in a stunning Spanish. He had never seen her so peaceful since they met and he felt strangely soothed.

Lydia had almost forgotten the reason she was there.

When they got into the car for their last day on the road, they both felt like they were travelling with a childhood friend, someone they had known for their whole lives.

Stiles had always believed he knew her like the back of his hand after all those years spent contemplating her. But he was surprised, catching sight of some of her sides that he didn’t know. He marvelled at them because they belonged to the real Lydia, the one who didn’t wear any mask. The one he fell in love with so many years ago.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read this it means you aren't sick with me, so thanks :) I havn't given up on this fic, december is just a crazy month!
> 
> I'm a little insecure about this chapter... I like reading fluff and cute stydia but I struggled a lot writing them this way... A little feedback would be much appreciated :)


	6. Finding North

They arrived in the small town where their contact had said she would be and didn’t even have the time to rest before their meeting. The GPS coordinates they had received led them to a parking lot where a man was waiting for them. Once the car parked, he gestured them to follow him.

The man was leading them further into a maze of deserted streets. The bleak surroundings sent shivers down Stiles’s spine and that man hadn’t said a single word. As far as they knew, he was leading them into a trap. He suddenly feared he had stuck their heads in the lion’s mouth without thinking this through. It never really had mattered before, but it did now. Lydia was with him, he had to be more careful.

He was cursing himself and wouldn’t have noticed the regular brushing of Lydia’s finger against his hand if he wasn’t this aware of her presence by his side. He could feel her breathing a little too loud, taking hesitant steps while trying to keep their guide in sight. He could see her glancing discreetly around them and understood that the same agitation had taken over her too. She surely didn’t even realize that each step she took was drawing her closer to him, that she was subconsciously seeking an anchor in the warmth of his hand.

Without thinking it over, Stiles let his hand hang a little looser. Lydia flinched slightly when she felt the lingering contact of Stiles’s hand against hers but didn’t say anything and didn’t divert her eyes from their guide’s neck. She was now knowingly avoiding the contact with his hand and Stiles was holding his breath, hoping to erase the few last seconds from his memory. After a few steps, he felt the electricity her fingertips left against his hand again and could finally release his breath.

From the corner of his eye, he saw what he believed was the tiniest smile he had ever seen on her lips. Looking down, he smiled too. It seemed to seal their silent agreement which led them to allow their hands to brush with every step they took, giving them balance and comfort.

Their guide opened the door of a disused building, gesturing them to follow him inside. Stiles and Lydia quickly glanced at each other before entering. She tried to put all the gratitude she felt for him in this brief glance. He flashed her a smile that could only be the definition of fondness and she hoped in that instant that he would always be able to translate what she was failing to verbalize.

They descended several flights of stairs and were asked to wait in a dark room. Their hands brushed again, her fingertips looking for his before finally intertwining. Their eyes got used to the darkness and they both startled when a woman they hadn’t seen stood up from across the room and turned the light on. With no forewarning, she began to talk.

“I know you’re looking for Peter, we’ve been following you for a while now. Have no fear, we’re not enemies. Peter brings disgrace on our family and entire species with his deviant acts. We want to help you find him.”

The woman paused so Stiles stepped forward.

“I’m sorry but who-“

“There was a man who contacted us years ago.” She cut him off, stepping forward as well. “I’m not sure who he is but he seemed to know Peter and wanted to find him. He told us about you, and he has been feeding us both information since then. Recently, I'm sure you've noticed, he's been difficult to reach. I fear he may have run into some trouble, so I made the decision to contact you. Thanks to his last message, I knew you were in Marvejols-“

“Wait… _trouble_? What _kind_ of trouble?”

“Well…” she cleared her throat, visibly embarrassed. “I can’t know for sure, but there are people who worship Peter for his ability to put his humanity completely aside and they’ll do anything to help him… Worst case scenario, he's been kidnapped and is being tortured.”

Stiles felt Lydia moving forward and grabbing his arm

“What’s the best case scenario?” Lydia asked with a quiver in her voice.

“That he was killed quickly.”

“Jesus… Okay…” Stiles whispered, rubbing Lydia’s fingers. “What makes you assume that?”

“Shortly before we lost contact, we received a video he recorded of himself speaking about a recent discovery he made. He was running and was worried he had been followed. The video ends abruptly, and since then...” She trailed off. “I wanted to make sure you got the information. I need someone unknown on the field… Someone like you. Everyone in Peter’s circle would recognize me.”

“Okay… What’s the… What’s the information then?” he said with a gulp.

“A teenage girl was found dead in Madrid. Her liver had been devoured. It seems that someone of our species committed the crime but it’s difficult to know if it was Peter or not. We know one of the Medical Examiner's who is willing to give us the result of the autopsy: the analysis of the bite marks should help us determine the strength and height of the attacker. We’ll start with that…”

The meeting only lasted a few minutes. They were able to ask a few questions but Stiles quickly realized that she couldn't give them any more information. Whether that was because couldn't or _wouldn't_ , Stiles wasn't sure. She may be trying to help, but Stiles only trusted her as far as he could throw her.

Madrid wasn’t far away, a few hours maybe, but they were tired and it was already pitch black when they got out of the building.

They walked, trying to remember the right way. Lydia had a bad feeling. She didn’t know if it was a simple response of her scared brain to those gloomy streets or if there was a real threat waiting to jump on them from one of the many dark corners.

A lump started to grow down her throat, making it hard to breathe and tightening her entire chest. She started to open her mouth to speak when she felt someone grabbing her arm and putting a hand over her mouth while the other arm was clasping her around her shoulders to pull her backwards. She ceased struggling when she realized it was Stiles who whispered in her ear:

“Sorry but someone is following us…”

He had pinned her against him in one of the alcoves along the street. She didn’t say anything, trying to be as quiet as possible. She could feel his heart beating against her back at the same erratic rhythm as hers. She felt all his muscles tighten around her and his warm and irregular breath caressing the nape of her neck and her hair. Curiously, it seemed to soothe her. His breathing was the only thing she could hear and focusing on that sound helped her forget the lump in her throat.

When Lydia finally managed to steady her own heartbeat, she nodded and the hand Stiles still had on her mouth joined his arm clasping around her shoulders. Lydia let her hands meet his arms in front of her chest.

Footsteps were coming closer. Stiles and Lydia held their breaths and tightened their embrace. Her hair tickled his nose a little as he felt her head leaning against his shoulder. He leaned forwards to bury his nose into it, breathing her in and feeling his heartbeat slow down at the same time.

“You moron! That’s your fault! You lost sight of them!”

“Whatever… Let’s just find another corpse to bring back.”

The two men’s voices faded then in the darkness and Lydia finally felt her chest and throat relax.

“Stiles? Stiles?”

She was whispering, the silence in the street was almost deafening and she was afraid to make the lowest sound. He wasn’t answering nor moving so she kept going.

“I think we’re okay…Stiles?”

“No, it’s not okay…”

He lowered his head. His mouth was barely an inch away from her ear.

“They were here to kill us Lydia. It’s all my fault that you ended up in this shitty situation. If you die, it’s on me… We go to Madrid, you take a plane and go home. It’s too dangerous.”

“No, Stiles!”

They were both still whispering but could hear the anger boiling underneath their words. Lydia abruptly turned around to face him. Stiles tried to hold her still by gripping her waist but she untied herself from him with such strength that he only managed to catch hold on her sleeve.

“I won’t go home, we already acknowledged that. Home… I’m not even sure I know where it is! Look, let’s go, okay? We’re not gonna stay here. We’ll talk about it once we’re somewhere safe.”

He didn’t answer but nodded and let go of the sleeve he was still firmly holding.

She wanted to make him understand this strength she felt in her. This strength pushing her toward the accomplishment of her task: find Peter and kill him. It was her duty. As if her entire life had led her to this moment. Everything else had to be put in brackets for a while, it may last a couple of weeks, months, years, … It didn’t matter to her as long as she followed through. Life wasn’t a career. It was made of several stages but there was no goal. Only death at the end. And she knew she wouldn’t die of old age surrounded by love and family if she lingered too long on this stage. The next one was awaiting her. Life was about transformation, evolution.

But she didn’t know how to verbalize that, how to make him truly understand so she made up her mind. She decided as they were walking that if he couldn’t understand her, she would go on alone. She didn’t need him, not anymore. She knew where to go now. They could stay in touch to give each other information about what they would find.

She would admittedly miss his presence, the intensity in his gaze, the warmth of his hands, his sarcasm, the red flushing of his cheeks, … But it didn’t matter. She was reclaiming her destiny, she could feel it. It filled her with a joy she had never experienced before. She was going forward, she felt powerful. Nothing and nobody would stop her.

Stiles tried but couldn’t guess what was on her mind. Something was wrong, that was obvious in the way she tensed every time his hand brushed hers. He eventually gave her more space. He was right and if they never see each other again, if he had just cut boldly into the ties that seemed to draw them toward each other, so be it. He was right, she wasn’t safe with him.

xxxxxxxx

They found a hotel and got a room. Stiles tried to convince her to leave again but it was a lost cause. She wasn’t even listening to him.

Lydia’s voice was quivering with a wild anger that she didn’t recognize when she told him she would continue without him if she had to. Stiles remained motionless for a while, unable to move, to think. He suddenly felt tiny, an insect in front of a true force of nature.

Letting the silence stretch and at a loss of words, he went to the bathroom to take a shower but even the boiling hot water wasn’t enough to warm him up. Her translucent green eyes and the tone of her steady voice had chilled him to the bone.

He was afraid he had just lost her forever. Now that seeing her leave was a real possibility, he was terrified. Terrified at the idea to take his old life back knowing that she was somewhere in the world, putting herself in danger to find someone he should have found himself a long time ago.

When he came out of the shower, she was asleep in the chair, letting him take the bed. He settled in the bed, under the blankets and sank into a blank and dream-free sleep.

xxxxxxxx

After what could have been hours or minutes, he woke up to terrible screams. Lydia was tossing and turning in her sleep with an incredible strength. Pillows and blankets were on the floor, she was crying and almost to the point of pulling her hair out.

Stiles leapt to his feet, not really knowing what to do. He took her in his arms and tried to softly lull her, tirelessly whispering in her ear “Lydia, it’s alright, wake up”.

She was freezing. She was struggling so much that Stiles had to climb in the chair behind her to immobilize her between his legs with her head under his chin to save her from harming herself more than what she already did.

Tears progressively stopped running down her cheeks and the twitch abiding in her body slowly faded. She finally opened her eyes, still gasping for breath, unable to speak and still frozen. It took her time to register where she was and who those arms around her belonged to.

Everything came back to her and she let herself melt against his chest, snuggling her head in the crook of his neck. She hid her face there and started crying again.

“I can’t stand it anymore… I can’t… I’m cold… so cold…”

Her words were broken with sobs. Stiles tightened his embrace around her and rubbed her arms. When he felt her relax under his palms, he whispered into her skin:

“You should take a shower; hot water could soothe you.”

She silently nodded, dried her eyes and absently headed for the bathroom.

Once the door was closed, Stiles let out a deep sigh and let himself fall against the back of the armchair. He was more than worried. Seeing her in this state was throwing him into a nameless panic and a little voice in his head was telling him that it was all his fault. He was brooding about the same things all over again. They were both stuck in an endless loop, had been repeating the same mistakes for ten years already and had no idea how to break out of this loop.

He tried to struggle against the weight of his heavy eyelids.

He would have wanted to see her come out of the shower and back in the bed, make sure that she was feeling better. But the steady sound of the running water was lulling him to sleep. He eventually caved in and drifted off without noticing. Exhausted and distraught, burning to join her and hold her in his arms a little longer but paralysed by the fear to invade her personal space.

xxxxxxxx

Lydia stayed a long time huddled up under the boiling hot water. Her skin on her shoulder was turning red and the steam was so thick that she could only vaguely make out the outlines of the objects around her. But it was no use, she couldn’t warm herself up.

She silently cried without knowing why. The emptiness she knew very well now was settling inside of her, spreading her dark wings until she felt completely smothered. And yet, she was sure she had broken out of her nightmare when she had felt the strength of Stiles’s arms around her.

Driven to despair, she let herself go, let the rage that had filled her a few hours ago swallowed her up again. She felt nothing else than the desire and the need to kill to get her revenge when she dried her tears. In a sort of haze, she turned the water off and got dressed. When she went out of the room, she didn’t even have a glance at Stiles asleep in the armchair.

 

* * *

 

_He relished this freedom. He had found the strength to venture in the streets, which was rather rare. But what was even more rare, was this insatiable thirst for blood and he loved that. Usually, there always was a time when he felt disgusted with himself and went back in his hole. But not this time. Nothing and nobody could stop him._

_It was a massacre. He was running on random streets, passing more slowly near street lights and enjoying with anticipation the terror of the people who would see him. He tore apart everything and everyone he found. Sometimes just to watch an old man dying in front of him._

_He didn’t know where his feet were leading him. His instinct was screaming violence and he contented himself with listening and following it._

_How long had the trance lasted? A few hours? Many days?_

_The sound of a train in the distance broke him out of it. The train station. What was he doing here? He looked around himself. The ground was covered with glass from broken shop windows and a with a few dead bodies._

_He started to walk back to his den but winced and noticed some sorts of burns on his shoulders that didn’t seem to heal like any wound would._

_With a shrug and a satisfied grin, he left._

 

* * *

 

Stiles woke up with a start a few hours later. Something had changed and it made him nervously bite his lips. He spent a few seconds to take deep breaths and realized that the sound of the shower was gone. The realization made him relax a little bit and he turned around to check whether Lydia was asleep in her bed or not.

His eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness and he could finally make out some shades and shapes thanks to the blue ghostly light from the alarm clock next to the bed.

When he realized that there was nothing between the sheets, his heart made an abrupt stop. He stood up and hurt his eyes when he turned all the lights on. He looked everywhere in the room and the bathroom, screaming her name and even checking under the bed and inside the closet. There was no trace of Lydia. She was gone.

Stiles froze, unable to conceive coherent thoughts. He wanted to scream, throw everything in the room at the walls. How could his surroundings be so quiet when a storm was raging inside of him?

He barely tied up his shoelaces, picked a shirt and rushed to the reception that _thank God_ was opened 24 hours.

Scruffy, with dishevelled hair and distracted eyes, Stiles stood in front of the receptionist who didn’t even look up from the magazine he was reading. He was flipping through it with an unconcerned look on his face while chewing gum. Stiles could see braces on his teeth every time he opened his mouth to take his bubble back into it. Loud music was filtering through his earphones and the teenager was humming the lyrics.

Stiles tried several times to get his attention and failed. Something was about to snap in him and he caught one of the earphones. The young boy rose his head shouting what Stiles interpreted as an insult. He managed somehow to understand that Lydia had called for a taxi to drive her to the train station.

After half an hour of waiting and pacing, a taxi finally arrived. It was cold outside but Stiles was too focused on remembering the events that at lead to this situation to notice. He could have done a lot of things to avoid it. He could have shut his mouth in the first place, he had to learn how to do that… He could have decided not to leave her alone in the bathroom but the mere idea of holding a naked Lydia in his arms was making him flush from his head to his feet… He definitely should have stayed awake, waited for her to come out of the shower.

He kept rubbing his eyes, hoping to wake up at any moment from this nightmare. But he could read everything around him and could count his ten fingers. He was already awake.

When the taxi stopped in front of the station, he sprinted off. Something was wrong. He didn’t know what, but something had just happened.

It was dark inside of the building and he had the feeling he was walking on broken glass. He didn’t pay attention to it, nor did he pay attention to the vandalized shop windows. His entire brain was screaming _Lydia_ and she was the only thing he could think about.

The station was small and he found her quickly. She was huddled on a bench, her eyes wide and with dry marks of tears on her cheeks. Stiles came up slowly to her.

“Lydia?”

She turned her head toward him with a start, as if he had awoken her. There was something like relief printed on her face that made Stiles’s heart beat a little faster. She was so frail in the instant that he was dying to shield her from the entire world in his arms.

“Can I sit down here?”

She answered with a nod, moving slightly to make room for him but remained speechless so Stiles resumed as softly as he could.

“Did you want to take a train?”

Lydia was staring at her intertwined fingers on her lap but still didn’t open her mouth. Stiles would have wanted to tell her how scared he had been, maybe get a little worked up; but she finally turned her gaze on him, and the distress he read in it made him keep his criticisms to himself.

When she eventually spoke, her voice was really weak and hoarse like she had been screaming too loud.

“No… I don’t think so…”

She was now staring at something behind Stiles and withdrew into silence again. They stayed like this for a long time. Stiles didn’t dare to say anything, but Lydia eventually broke the silence.

“I’m tired.”

Stiles stood up, offering her his hand for leverage.

“Come on then, I’m gonna call a taxi.”

Lydia tried to stand but her legs failed her and she collapsed against Stiles who managed to hold her at the last second. He helped her walking out of the station and climbing in the taxi still parked in front of the station.

xxxxxxxx

When they arrived at the hotel room, Stiles tucked her in the bed and collapsed onto the armchair.

Lydia was exhausted but couldn’t close her eyes. She had a strange feeling that she was awaking from the most vivid nightmare she ever had. The events weren’t clear in her mind but the hate she had felt was still there somewhere. She was cold again and started panicking. The thoughts that had crossed her mind weren’t hers, she didn’t recognize them. And yet she had moved from this room to the train station… But why? Why the train station? To go to Madrid by herself? That’s the idea she had had but she didn’t remember making the decision. It was as if someone else had made it for her.

A noise followed by swears made her sit up. She adjusted to the darkness and saw Stiles trying to fit his long legs in the small armchair. A soothing warmth spread through her.

“Stiles?”

“What? Are you hurt? Are you alright?”

She smiled, biting her lower lip. He had answered the second she had called him and almost fallen down in his haste to turn around to look at her.

“Come here, you’ll sleep better in the bed.”

“No, it’s alright. You need a good sleep more than I do.”

“Stiles, I can… We can share you know, the bed is big enough for two.”

Lydia was happy the room was plunged into darkness because she couldn’t hide her smile any more. It took a few seconds for Stiles to understand what she was suggesting.

“Oh… Well… I… If you… Really?”

“Stiles, come on…”

“Yeah… Yeah, alright.”

She slipped under the blankets and turned to face the other side of the bed. Stiles hesitated before standing up and finally laid down next to her, keeping his distance to avoid invading her personal space. They were facing each other with a hand under their respective pillow, watching each other without saying anything. Silence was comfortable and seeing that she seemed to be herself again, Stiles couldn’t resist the urge to break it.

“Lydia, look…”

“No please, don’t… We’ll speak tomorrow.”

Stiles sensed such distress in her voice that he kept quiet. His free hand was nervously toying with the pillowcase. After the events of the night, he was still in a state of shock and this new proximity with Lydia made him feel a thousand different emotions. He didn’t know what to do with his hands, didn’t know how to keep still, what to say or even how to look at her. She was this determined woman, smart and dangerous. He knew that of course. But seeing her in such despair at the station had killed him. He felt the need deep inside of him to protect her, to shield her from the world but mostly from herself and from himself.

He opened his mouth again but she turned her back to him. It was like getting punched in the stomach, he was gasping for air. He was so in love with her, wanted to tell her and to beg her to let him try to make her happy. He couldn’t move. He didn’t dare.

She must had sensed his discomfort because she slightly turned around and without saying anything, took his hand that was still toying with the pillowcase in hers and intertwined their fingers. He started at the sensation of her frozen hand against his and instinctively came closer. Her back was colder than her hand and she let out a weak moan when she felt his warm chest behind her. She nestled closer against him, bringing their hands on her stomach. His left leg came between hers and Stiles felt her body warm up slowly against his.

Before drifting off to sleep, she weakly whispered “thanks” and fell asleep at the sensation of Stiles kissing her hair. He waited until her breath steadied itself to finally close his eyes.

xxxxxxxx

When Stiles woke up on the next morning, Lydia was nowhere to be seen.

He sat up abruptly on his forearms and for a few seconds, he thought his heart was trying to leap in his throat to get out. He was out of breath. Was the previous night some sort of premonition? Was he doomed to live this moment in a loop until the end of times?

The sudden sound of the shower made his brain remember how to use his lungs and he collapsed onto the pillows. He stayed like that a little while, waiting to collect his wits again.

Lydia came out of the bathroom and they didn’t exchange a single word. Neither of them was hungry. They swallowed a large coffee and spent half an hour to find their car without exchanging a single word.

The ride to Madrid was as quiet. Stiles didn’t know what to say. He was scared to say the thing that would make her leave for good so he didn’t open his mouth. He drove. His fingers were betraying his nervousness while feverishly drumming on the wheel and on the gear stick.

Lydia didn’t know what to say or what to do either. This silence was making her nauseous. She wasn’t used to see him like that. Something was wrong and she was sure that it was because of what happened on the previous night.

She absently watched the landscape passing by. She wanted to thank him, tell him that she had slept a deep, quiet and refreshing sleep. She felt so much better today than the day before, better than any day in the past ten years to be honest.

Thinking about her behaviour from the previous day made her sick. She barely recognized herself in the hate that drove her to the train station. The idea that maybe those feelings weren’t hers crossed her mind again and chilled her to the bone. That’s what she wanted to tell him. He had to know. He had to know how much the comforting feeling of his body all around her had warmed up her entire body and soul.

But the landscape kept unfolding in front of her eyes. They entered the industrial and impersonal park surrounding every capital. With each billboard, she felt that what she was trying to rebuild between her and Stiles was shrinking.

The coldness of revenge was invading her mind again. Before it was too late, before she stopped to feel the warm beating of her heart and before she lost sight of the last fragile string tying them together, she told him the first thing she could think of.

“Did you see? There are posters for a _Star Wars_ exposition…”

He replied with a smile she knew too well: it was the same she had always used. A mere curl of the lips, a muscular reflex. A smile you could read on the lips but a smile that didn’t reach the eyes.

Lydia suddenly wanted to cry, to scream. She was suffocating, it was too much, too much… She took a deep breath and recited her new mantra, hoping it would help her compass to point north again: find Peter, make him pay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the kuddos, I really appreciate it :) <3  
> Don't hesitate to tell me your thoughts!


	7. Why don't we walk until tomorrow?

They found the Medical Examiner the woman told them about, but the results of the autopsy weren't available just yet. They were told to come back later in the day.

They silently agreed to start walking.

And they hadn’t said anything since then.

For at least the tenth time, Stiles opened his mouth, as if he was going to say something but closed it. Lydia breathed loudly through her nose and her eyes fell on those posters announcing a _Star Wars_ exhibition again.

She came to a halt, caught hold of Stiles’s arm and showed him the poster.

“You know, we could go there if you wanted to…”

Lydia wasn’t a hardcore fan of those movies, but she remembered how carried away Stiles had gotten when he first told her about them. Maybe it would make him forget about what had happened last night.

“I don’t know… I’m not really in the mood,” he said, shrugging.

His eyes weren’t meeting hers. He was looking down and absently scratching the gravel with the tip of his shoe, his hands shoved into his pockets.

“Stiles?”

Lydia had to lower her head to meet his gaze but he kept looking away. He felt childish acting this way but he was lost and couldn’t think of anything better.

“Stiles!”

She eventually caught his chin and made him look at her.

“We are not gonna aimlessly wander through the streets the entire day and I refuse to let you blame yourself any longer for I don’t know what. You helped me a lot last night so let me help you clear your mind, okay? You told me once that _Star Wars_ helped you forget about everything, right? Don’t you want that now?”

He finally looked at her and she thought she could read gratitude in his amber eyes. She smiled, relieved to see an actual emotion replacing the emptiness that had settled in his stare since the morning.

“Alright,” he nodded, “let’s go.”

                                                                                                  xxxxxxxx                                 

The exhibition was amazing. The different rooms were plunged into darkness, blocking out the entire outside world and it felt like immersing himself in his childhood again. A time when everything looked easier from his perspective.

_Star Wars_ always made him think about Scott. He had tried innumerable times to convince him to watch the movies with him… Even if it was just one. A wave of sadness took hold of him at the thought of his best friend and the fact that there had always been an emergency interrupting their quiet time together. _Star Wars_. Video games. Long talks. Their entire teenage years.

They hadn’t really spoken in ten years. When Stiles had left, they would Skype or send each other long emails. Now… now it was a text for their birthdays or on New Year’s Eve. Stiles always wondered how their reunion would go if he ever decided to go back to Beacon Hills. Deep inside, he wished they would be able to pick up their friendship from where they had left it off: safe in the tree house they had built in Scott’s garden.

He tried to hold back the tears he felt coming and focused his gaze on Lydia who seemed to be deep in thought in front of an Ewok costume. She was raising an eyebrow in the most sceptical way Stiles had ever seen. Lydia must have felt his gaze on her because she turned her head and smiled at him. A genuine smile that made her eyes sparkle a little in the darkness.

Stiles felt his sadness evaporate in a second and replace itself with a mixture of adoration and exhilarating happiness. He caught himself giggling at the sight of her. It was improbable: here he was, enjoying himself in an exhibition for geeks with the most beautiful woman in the world who seemed to be enjoying herself as well. He decided to focus more. He owed her at least that for dragging her there.

Between costumes and photos, there were questions they had to answer to ultimately discover their identity in the _Star Wars_ universe.

Lydia wasn’t really paying attention to it. She didn’t know this universe so well and the main reason she had an excellent time was the cheerful and peaceful expression Stiles had worn during their visit.

But at the end, when she looked at him to point out the fact that they had the same result, his radiant smile was gone. There was something in his eyes Lydia couldn’t decipher, fear maybe?

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Let’s go…”

It wasn’t a question nor an affirmation. He was completely lost.

Outside, torrential rain had begun to fall from the earlier blue sky and they didn’t have an umbrella.

“Wait here, I’ll see if I can get us a taxi.”

“Sti-”

She tried to hold him back but he had already left, heading toward the empty taxi station.

He stopped in the middle of the square, motionless, his eyes turned toward the sky. Lydia stared at him a little while, wondering what could have happened and eventually ran to him.

The rain surprised her. It was warm and the raindrops were so big she was drenched to the skin after three steps. She eventually reached him and put her hand on his shoulder without saying anything. He turned his watery gaze toward her.

“Lydia…”

Stiles was looking for words, opening his mouth only to let out sighs. Lydia remained silent, figuring he needed time to find the exact words and to collect his wits.

“I saw it… I saw… We had the same result. Anakin… God I hate him...” He sighed once again and began to speak with frantic gesture, almost yelling at the end. “I could never understand how someone could let his life deteriorate so much. He’s a stereotype, a cliché! His life is tragic. And we know it, we know it from the beginning. We know that the young boy who only wants to do good, who wants to love and make the people he loves happy is gonna end up killing all of them, destroying an entire civilization… And why? Love! All that for love. He’s destroying himself everyday a little more without noticing it. That’s fucked up… He’s fucked up… Who does that? In the real world somebody would have done something to stop it. Right?”

He had said it in one breath without daring to look at Lydia. Her heart sank at the sight of his sad smile. She knew he was comparing his life to the result they got. Some bullshit like “Attachment is the path to the dark side. Careful you must be or Anakin Skywalker’s fate you will know.” She hated that it was affecting him this much. Something in her stomach made her want to take him in her arms to erase all those thoughts.

“It’s just a silly game Stiles.”

This small sad smile wasn’t leaving his face but he was now looking at her.

Rain was pouring down. They were the only ones outside and the whole atmosphere made him suddenly wants to cry or run away with her until all their problems are gone. Of course, he didn’t believe in what this stupid machine and its algorithm were prophesying. But they had the same result and that was scaring him to no end. He knew he had taken the wrong path a long time ago but her… No… he refused to lead her toward the same fate as him. She was made for life, passion, actual and genuine warmth. Not this illusion, this drug that was revenge.

He was now nervously laughing, feeling crazy. Crazy at the idea that somewhere, someone had decided that Lydia Martin’s fate would be to follow his. That her destiny would be made of death, violence and sadness. He wanted to change everything, take the pen out of the hand of the author who had decided that Lydia Martin had to live a miserable life, and rewrite her story to make it a happy one.

“Stiles?”

Hearing her pronouncing his name roused him from his reverie. He was still laughing and Lydia was starting to worry.

“God Lydia… You deserve so much better!”

He hesitated a few seconds before taking her face in his hands.

“Why don’t we just stop, Lydia… Let’s… Let’s go somewhere, anywhere! I want to see the Mediterranean Sea, taste all the ice cream flavours in the world… wake up with a sunburn on my head after sleeping on the beach and run through unknown streets without having someone to shake off!” He paused to stifle a laugh and run his thumb on Lydia’s cheek, his voice rasping and almost a whisper “I know it’s ridiculous, but Lydia… He already stole our teenage years! I don’t want him to steal what we have left.”

“Stiles, I…”

“One week, Lydia, one week.”

He was so elated that he wasn’t listening to her, he was sure she wouldn’t agree anyway.

“You give me one week and we fly to…” he looked around and saw an advertisement for cheap flights to Andalusia.”… Andalusia! Andalusia is perfect, right? One week in Andalusia and then, if you still wanna look for him, we will. And if you want me to leave you alone, I will.”

“I don’t know, Stiles…”

“One week.”

His smile was starting to vanish and he was now murmuring, his eyes closed.

“Okay, yes…”

She had answered without pondering but didn’t regret her words when she saw his smile returning on his lips and in his eyes. There was a ball of light and warmth growing in her chest and she couldn’t do anything else than nod while tirelessly repeating “okay”.

Tears were burning her eyes but she couldn’t look away from his intense stare. Rain seemed to extinguish the fire they had started when they had left together to replace it with a radiant warmth. Lydia couldn’t put words on what she was feeling. The firm resolutions she had taken the day before were melting like snow in the sun.

She eventually broke the spell they were under.

“Stiles, my feet are drowning in their shoes,” she said, laughing.

He laughed softly without saying anything and they started to walk toward the still empty taxi station. They let their hands brush, touch and finally intertwined their fingers. Their eyes met and they both couldn’t help smiling, electrified by the sensation.

Lydia suggested to look for a shelter but Stiles shook his head enigmatically and ran to cross the street. He stopped on the opposite sidewalk, took his soaked shoes off and waved at her to follow him. She hesitated a minute before taking them off.

She was surprised how hot the asphalt was burning. With this warmth and the raindrops being always bigger and hotter, it was like being out of this world. Maybe in a tropical country under the monsoon. She only had vague memories of the Californian sun and had only known since then the soft north European warmth. It was something else here. Something wilder maybe. In the middle of this downpour and wet warmth, she caught herself craving things she never thought she would. Andalusia, desert, scorching sun and burning ground. A breath of hot and dry air.

A genuine smile was stretching on her lips. She rose her head and saw Stiles, barefoot and euphoric in the puddles. It was definitely the expression she liked the most on him. Lydia shook her head and ran to meet him in the puddles.

It was exhilarating. Nothing mattered anymore, everything seemed unreal under this tropical rain. The ground was so hot that water kept evaporating bellow them, creating humidity and making their clothes stick to their skin. The only way to make this sensation bearable was to jump in the puddle to wet their clothes. Lydia could barely recognize herself but acting like a child was filling her with an infinite happiness.

They kept running while holding hands and burst out laughing whenever one of them was slipping, forcing the other one to regain balance for both of them.

At one point, Lydia stumbled and almost fell flat on her face if it wasn’t for Stiles who had the reflex to catch her at the last second. She clumsily stood up with an embarrassed smile and clung to Stiles’s forearm to cross a huge puddle. Once the obstacle was behind them, Lydia loosened her grip on Stiles but neither of them moved. Her gaze slowly went up his arm, torso, neck to finally meet his stare. She whispered _thank you_ and almost imperceptibly came closer with her eyes glued to his lips.

She felt Stiles hold his breath and suddenly felt like the 11-year-old Lydia who had no idea what to do with her body or with her emotions. She kissed him lightly at the corner of his lips, feeling bolder than she had been in years.

Stiles froze and looked at her mesmerized with a stupid grin on his lips.

A car hurtled past them and splashed them which eventually broke them out of their trance. They came back to reality and ran to the nearest subway station. Almost automatically, their hands found each other.

At the station, they were dripping so much that a security guard forbade them to get in. They sat on a bench to wait until they were dry enough and Stiles became very aware of what the rain had done to Lydia’s clothes. She was gorgeous like that with her curves well defined, her make-up a little smudged and her hair darker than usual.

Realizing he was staring a little too long and feeling his neck and cheeks starting to burn, he looked away. His finger came up to absentmindedly brush the corner of his mouth where he had felt her lips on his and he smiled.

Lydia didn’t miss his reaction and bit her lower lip to muffle her laugh. She came closer to him to lay her head on his shoulder and grab his arm. They remained speechless for a while, taking the time to absorb and relish those newborn emotions.

The time they got back to their hotel, they had forgotten they had to contact the Medical Examiner again for the autopsy analysis.

They bought popcorn and watched _Return of the Jedi_ in the king-sized bed. Halfway through it, Lydia fell asleep on Stiles’s shoulder with a peaceful expression on her face. He didn’t even consider getting angry or waking her up to remind her it was a masterpiece and that she had to pay attention. Instead, he finished the popcorn smiling and swearing to himself he would do everything in his power to help her fall asleep as peacefully every night.

Lydia woke up at the end of the movie to the soft feeling of Stiles’s lips on the top of her head.

“Sorry to wake you up but you’re starting to drool on my shirt,” she heard him whisper.

She opened her eyes, feeling her heart beat a little too fast.

“What-“

Lydia straightened up with a start, checking the corner of her mouth with her fingers but stopped as soon as she saw Stiles giggling and looking at her with a mischievous spark in his eyes.

“I’m joking, the movie’s over and I’m hungry…”

“Oh my god, you’re such an ass!”

Stiles was slowly starting to sit up still softly laughing when Lydia threw a pillow at him, half chuckling. He turned around quickly and retaliated with a different pillow that Lydia caught and threw back at him. They went on like this until they ran out of pillows. The bedroom was a mess of fluffy pillows and sheets scattered around the floor. They eventually stopped, facing each other and kneeling on the mattress, trying to catch their breath between their laughter.

Seeing Lydia out of breath and genuinely smiling made Stiles bold. They were so close that it was too easy for him to reach out to tickle her. She laughed and leaned forward, trying to get a hold on his hands. The room was soon filled with their laughs once more, mixed with heavy breathing and some “Stiles, stop!” said without much conviction.

At one point, Lydia realized that their fight had brought them to a position where he was lying on top of her, between her legs with his hands trapping her own hands beside her head. Their laughs were starting to fade away. All Lydia could focus on was the dark, intoxicating shade of Stiles eyes, his chest moving hard at the same rhythm as her own and the growing heat of their bodies against each other.

Something in Stiles’s eyes made her entire body shiver when his stare fell on her lips and she froze, realizing that all she had to do was lift her head a few inches to kiss him. He was breathing loudly through his parted lips, his breath caressing her mouth and neck. It was heady, she could feel the heavy beating of his heart against her chest and it made her subconsciously tighten her thigh around his waist.

Stiles closed his eyes at the feeling, almost letting his head fall on her shoulder. He was drowning himself in her, in the scent of her hair, in her presence underneath him, in the sounds she made when she was breathing erratically like that. But all the sudden, he felt Lydia’s grip loosen around his hips, a small gasp escaping her lips. He opened his eyes and what he saw in her eyes made him come back to reality. He wasn’t sure but it looked like panic or shock. He quickly let her arms go and sat back on his heels.

“I… I’m sorry,” he mumbled with a hand going nervously through his hair and down his neck. “Are you… Are you okay? I really didn’t mean to… I was just… I don’t know what I was... I’m so sorry, Lydia, I never… I never wanted to put you in a situation where… I don’t know…” He sighed, letting his hand fall down his side. “I don’t want you to think I’m taking advantage of you.”

“No, Stiles, please don’t.” She sat up, shaking her head. “I swear you didn’t do anything wrong, it was me. I’m fine, I swear.”

Something in the way Lydia looked at him, almost apologetically, told him that she really was sorry, that he hadn’t done anything wrong.

“Okay.” He continued, breathing a little better. “If I ever do something that makes you feel insecure, just… Just tell me or kick me in the nuts, okay?”

The atmosphere around them felt lighter and they both laughed softly underneath their breath.

“I will.”

Lydia nodded and stood up, smiling quietly and still feeling the weight of his body on her belly and the warmth of his hands in her own.

“Are you… Are you hungry?” Stiles asked with something like concern in his voice. He was still feeling guilty and it made Lydia sick. He really hadn’t done anything wrong but Lydia needed some time alone to understand the panic she had felt in her entire body.

“I’m fine, go ahead.”

Stiles nodded, looking down before whispering a soft “’kay”.

He stood up and stopped at the door, turning around to look at her. “I’m just gonna buy some stuff at the grocery store across the street. I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

“Okay.” Lydia could see that he was hesitant to leave her alone. He had opened the door but kept playing with the doorknob. She understood what was going through his mind. The last time he had left her alone, she had had a mental breakdown. So she spoke out “Stiles, I’m fine. I’m not going anywhere, I promise.”

He waited a few seconds, biting his lips and eventually nodded and closed the door behind him.

When she heard the slam of the door, Lydia let herself fall on the naked mattress, her mind devoid of any thoughts. What had just happened? It all happened so fast she had trouble figuring out how they had found themselves in a situation where all she could think about was how Stiles’s lips would taste.

But this bliss had vanished the second he had closed his eyes. Those gorgeous amber eyes that had become her entire universe. The only place where she could lose herself without fearing anything, the only place that felt like home. And yet, her body had betrayed herself in those eyes. She couldn’t lose the control over her body, it was too dangerous. She wasn’t sure why, especially with him but the mere thought of not knowing what she was doing was tightening her entire chest. It happened to her too often and it was scary, who knows who or what was taking control over her… She felt this strong pull toward Stiles, she wanted more than anything to let herself go, be a little selfish for once and live. But was it worth it? Was _she_ worth it? She wasn’t always herself; her thoughts weren’t always her thoughts. She couldn’t hurt Stiles, she wouldn’t hurt him, and he was far too precious now.

She hadn’t forgotten the need she had felt to protect him under the rain earlier.

Besides, it had been so long since the last time she had let herself function like any other human being that she had no idea how she would do it again.

She felt herself spiral down her usual well of unanswered questions and started to feel nauseous just like she had felt on the Lacrosse field so long ago. Control. It was all about control. If she agreed to leave with him to Andalusia, she had to keep control over herself and over her body.

But now wasn’t the time to think about that. Stiles would be back any time soon and she had promised him she was fine. She stood up and cleaned the room, picking the pillows and the sheets to make the bed.

Tomorrow. She would think about that tomorrow.

For now, she allowed herself to smile at the memory of the day, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding a pillow tight against her heart. It smelled like him.

xxxxxxxx

Their breakfast the next morning was eaten in silence.

The night hadn’t helped Lydia with her constant questioning. She tried to look at it from another angle.

Control was about rationality and she was ordinarily someone rational, she kept a good distance from her emotions to make sure she could properly analyse them. In all logic, her behaviour from the day before was a bug in her perfect system.

The more she thought about it, the more she had the impression of seeing scenes from a cheesy movie unfolding before her eyes. It aggravated her. Since when was Lydia Martin one of those girls whose only goal in life was to find the ultimate love? She had to pull herself together.

Unless it was an update. In which case she had to learn the rules applying here.

“Did you know that if a mosquito’s bite is itching, it’s actually because you’re allergic to it?”

“What?”

Stiles pulled her from her thought and was looking at her while trying and failing to open his boiled eggs without getting it all over the table.

“Mosquitos…”

He bent down to catch a piece of egg shell that had fallen down.

“The bite isn’t actually itching. What hurts is in fact the reaction of your body trying to protect itself against the attack. Crazy, right? I mean… We had it all wrong when we thought people who got bitten had a sweeter blood than the others. I was so proud of my sweet blood… Turns out I’m just allergic!”

Lydia laughed through her breath despite herself. Stiles had stayed focused on his eggs during his entire explanation and she couldn’t help but observe him with an amused smile. How could she believe she would be able to stay ice-cold with him when everything he did made her feel so warm and alive?

Silence stretched out a little, meanwhile Stiles insulted his eggs every other second.

“Do you still wanna-“

He didn’t finish his sentence. He had no idea whether he should ask her the question or not. Stiles knew very well that they had both acted in a highly emotional state the day before and he wasn’t sure if their resolution was still in her mind.

“What, Stiles?”

“-leave? D’you still wanna leave?”

He watched her from the corner of his eyes.

Lydia straightened up instantly, figuring that the same questions that were looping in her head must have been in his too. She took her time to decide on the strategy to adopt and eventually decided for honesty.

“I don’t know. I’m still struggling to understand everything that happened. I’m not the kind of person who acts like this. I analyse, I think and then I take action. Since I met you…”

She sighed, she couldn’t find the right words and paused to look at this boy with a ridiculous name and mesmerizing amber eyes, wondering if maybe they were the reason why her mind was constantly devoid of any word. Maybe it was the price to pay to drown in them. A little of her intelligence against a few seconds somewhere outside the world. Truth be told, she actually didn’t really mind.

“And you?” she resumed after a few seconds. “Do you?”

Stiles considered the question a little while, remembering the day before and feeling the same panic that had taken hold of him resurface. Maybe their decision was irrational but never would he put Lydia in the same position again. He remembered finding her in that train station and felt a shiver down his spine. No… This wasn’t an option, it wasn’t opened for discussion. But at the same time, he understood what she was trying to say. Lydia Martin didn’t let herself be guided by her emotions. She wasn’t that kind of person. He had to play smart.

“Yeah… I think I do, yes. Lydia look, I get what you mean but consider it from a different perspective. When was your last vacation?”

“Well… That’s… an excellent question…”

“Then just consider it like a vacation! One week in the sun to celebrate your Fields Medal. The beach, the sea, shellfish, basking in the sun, eating ice-cream… When the week is over, we can resume the resea– “

“Yeah, okay,” she said hurriedly and cutting him off. She knew what he was going to say. He was going to talk about Peter again and she would let other emotions overwhelm her. “Let’s go then,” she continued after a few seconds, “Now. I’ll take care of the organization and reservations. I’m never setting foot in another hotel like the ones you found us.”

She absolutely had to take control of the situation again, and organizing the travel was the best solution. It didn’t require any emotion.

She tried to put as much as contempt as she could in her last words but given his delighted smile, she figured she must have said it wrong, more teasingly maybe. Who was she kidding anyway… She wanted this.

Lydia stood up, setting her jaw to try to regain her composure. She headed toward the stairs leading to the rooms mumbling something about the suitcases.

Stiles kept smiling.

 

* * *

 

_How did it happen? How could it happen to him? Those kinds of things happened to others, to weak people but not him…_

_This renewed energy he had been feeling for days suddenly failed him at the worst moment. He was fighting, savouring the taste of blood and flesh in his mouth when something or someone hit him in his back. It surprised him even more that he hadn’t felt any presence behind him._

_He was already groggy when his opponent jumped on him, he didn’t have the strength to push him back. He wanted to fight back, but his muscles were failing him. Something sharp gashed his stomach and the weakest howl of pain left his throat. His back hit the coldness of a wall behind him and everything turned black._

_A moment later – or was it hours? – his eyes opened. He crawled to escape this place but he was losing a lot of blood and could feel now the presence of something evil around him, cutting his lips, hands, shoulders with its claws. After a few minutes of crawling the fastest he could and growling from pain, he realized he was lost in this maze and had no idea where to go. Each time he took an alley that seemed to lead toward an exit, he found himself lost deeper in the maze. It was a nightmare. His heart was pounding hard in his chest and it was scaring him to no end. He could die in this hole…_

_He stood up on shaky legs which only resulted on making him dizzy and bleed faster. Trying to summon up his strength, he closed his eyes to regain balance and howled the loudest he could to scare his opponent. His legs failed him after a few steps and he ended up crawling again, begging for mercy with the salty taste of his tears mixed with the bitterness of blood in his mouth._

_He eventually found the exit, he could leave this dark alley to go out on the street but was too scared. With jittery gesture, he turned around, trying to spot his opponent but there was no one behind him. Crawling closer to the wall, he managed somehow to sit up against it, feeling its coldness against his open wound and wincing with pain._

_Breathing was causing him sharp pain in his entire ribcage. He closed his eyes, trying to focus on something else to make his pulse return to normal._

_It’s only hours later that he noticed the huge puddle he was sitting in. He had blacked out and was now freezing to the bones. The cold water had soaked him, seeping through his skin._

_The moon was nowhere to be seen in the cloudy dark sky and an icy wind was roaring in his ears, making him wince each time he shivered. He blacked out again, failing to understand what could have happened._


	8. The taste of strawberry jam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you'll enjoy this slightly longer chapter. I know I did :)  
> Tracie (Eicartgeorge), thank you thank you for all the ideas you give me and the time you spend on this, I trully apreciate it <3  
> Thanks for the kuddos, sweet readers :)

Once Lydia had retreated to their room, Stiles took his time to finish breakfast. He knew she needed time alone to process all of this. He went to the reception to pay for their night and ask for tourist information about Andalusia.

A little less than an hour later, he went back to their room to find Lydia sprawled on the bed, going through her phone to find somewhere they could afford for an entire week. She lifted her head when she heard the door opening and smiled at him.

“I think I found a nice place, not too expensive but close enough from the city centre in Granada,” she said sitting up.

She had tried to speak with the most casual tone possible but the truth was that it had been a nightmare to find a place for a very specific reason: the number of bedrooms. Should they share one or was it inappropriate? She had volunteered for this, thinking that planning would help her clear her mind and take control over everything again but answering this question was maybe taking a little too much control.

Obviously, taking one bedroom made sense because they had been doing that a lot and it was always cheaper. But she had clearly implied that _she_ would choose their hotel so they would stay somewhere fancier, more comfortable. And when friends were travelling together, more comfortable meant two bedrooms.

Problem was that Lydia wanted not only to share a bedroom with Stiles, she wanted to share a bed with him and she was pretty positive that he wouldn’t mind either. But she had to find a logical reason why they would share a bed. She couldn’t just tell him that she craved his warm presence next to her, his steady arms around her waist and his nose buried in her hair. It was irrational how safe and happy he made her feel.

It scared her because it wasn’t logical and therefore, she had zero control over it.

On the other hand, she wanted to change, take the leap. That’s why she had accepted Stiles’s offer in the first place.

And after what had felt like a century, the solution appeared: two single beds next to each other in one bedroom.

So, when Stiles opened the door and looked at her with his beautiful eyes and ruffled hair, she tried to remember that she couldn’t tell him everything that had went through her mind.

She patted the bed next to her to make him sit down and showed him a perfect apartment located on one of the hills in the city with a huge kitchen and a nice terrace with a stunning view over Granada and the mountains behind.

“See,” she continued, “it’s gorgeous, we would have the entire apartment for ourselves and it’s not that expensive. The only thing is that we’ll share a bedroom…”

Stiles was looking at the pictures on her phone, trying not to pay attention to Lydia next to him who was watching closely to his reaction. She saw him shuddering slightly and maybe blush a little before answering.

“Fine by me.”

He gave her her phone back and smiled. His face was too close to hers to allow her to cover her sudden blush so she looked back at her phone, biting her lips and started to make the reservation.

xxxxxxxx

They arrived late at night, tired but happy. Their struggles and questions were so far away that it was almost like they belonged to another life. The apartment smelled like vacation and summer: a mix of sweetness, flowers and sun cream.

It was dark outside but there was a nice warm breeze. Their faces were bathed in the light of the stars that illuminated a cloudless sky. Lydia couldn’t tear her eyes off of Stiles’s pale features, the cold light accentuating the warmth of his eyes. He seemed so calm it was hypnotising. She let her gaze be caught by Stiles and they wordlessly smiled at each other. Despite their tiredness, they sat on the terrace and stayed a little while, enjoying this soothing serenity in silence before going to bed.

The got back inside after a little while and Lydia froze when she opened their bedroom door. The owner must have changed something without warning them because this wasn’t a room with two single beds but a room with one and only one king-sized bed. She felt Stiles staring at the bed behind her and slowly turned around. She was about to open her mouth to offer him an explanation when he spoke.

“I can sleep on the couch if you want.”

Her stomach dropped and her tiredness made her react quicker than if she had been fully awake.

“No, it’s fine. It’s big enough to share.”

Falling asleep facing each other like it was the most normal thing in the world was overwhelming for Stiles after everything that had happened. Lydia drifted off first after whispering _good night_ underneath her breath and it was all of a sudden like they had been doing this their entire life. No dread, no evil werewolves, nothing was waiting for them when the sun would rise. They had all the time in the world to figure things out and it felt like paradise.

Somehow, this scene seemed to belong to another Stiles and Lydia. A Stiles and Lydia who would maybe text each other constantly, who would spend a week far away from their jobs and order take-out every night because they would stay in bed naked and curled up in each other all day long. A Stiles and Lydia who wouldn’t know anything about the supernatural, who would live the most normal and boring life possible. They would be happy anyway. How couldn’t they be? Stiles was sure that they would always find their way back to each other and be happy. Whatever the universe they would live in.

Having her so close to him felt right. Her fingers were barely an inch away from his face and Stiles had to stop himself from taking them in his hands. He shut his eyes and fell asleep within minutes.

xxxxxxxx

Lydia woke up at 6AM with Stiles’s warm hand against hers. She took a few minutes to fully wake up, taking his figure in. His face was buried in his pillow, his bare back slowly rising. He seemed so peaceful it made her chest tighten with the simplest joy.

She stood up carefully to avoid waking him up. Losing the contact of her hand made him groan softly and turn in his sleep. Lydia smiled, got dressed quickly and went outside on the terrace.

The morning sky was gorgeous with its thousand blue, orange and pink shades. The sun was slowly rising. It was already warm but it was still bearable. On the tree next to her, birds were already singing. They were the only ones already awake to witness the dazzlingly beauty of nature with her. The city was still asleep and quiet.

In the tranquillity of the early morning, Lydia found herself alone to face the questions looping in her head. She was taken back to the day she had received the Field’s Medal and wondered what had happened to her since then. She was in Granada, unemployed, with someone she barely knew in high school. She was in an empty space that she could fill with whatever she wanted. It was like being on the verge of a precipice and it scared her.

But she had to admit that staring right into the abyss was less scary with Stiles. He brought her peace and warmth, steadying her when she was leaning too far over the emptiness.

Lydia had already realized that Stiles was anchoring her to the world but what she was starting to perceive was that maybe, she was helping him too. She didn’t know how yet but there was a difference in his eyes, in the way he peacefully fell asleep since they had decided to take a week off that gave her a reason to try to control what was happening to her. She had to be able to pull him back when he needed her help. Just like he had pulled her back hundreds of time.

This empty space was _theirs_ to fill. She needed to bring something of her own, allow herself to simply _be_. But what did she have to offer except her dark thoughts? Without them, she was as empty as the monster from her nightmares. They were practically her whole life. Who was she without this darkness inside of her?

Her chest tightened again and it wasn’t with the joy she had felt earlier. She started pacing on the terrace. What more did she need to fight against those thoughts? It was sunny, warm, the birds were singing and the view was stunning… She felt herself spiral down again.

Stiles.

She needed Stiles.

She got back into the apartment and nervously opened the door to their bedroom. The sight of him, still peacefully sleeping loosened the knot in her chest a little. He was sleeping on his left side and it would be so easy to crawl back in the sheets and fit inside his embrace with her head in the crook of his neck.

But she couldn’t. She would eventually destroy him, drag him down with her in her emptiness. Problems never went away just because you decided to look in another direction. She had to face the void inside her to find her own strength. She couldn’t use him as a weapon. He deserved better. Then and only then she would maybe consider the idea of letting him in.

She quietly closed the door and wrote a note to Stiles.

_I woke up early and went for a walk. I didn’t want to wake you. Please don’t worry, everything’s fine, I’m fine. I just wanted to explore the city. I’ll come back with breakfast._

She hesitated. How was she supposed to sign? Just _Lydia_ sounded too harsh and _Love you, Lydia_ was maybe a little too much. After two or three minutes standing motionless above the table with the pen in her hand, she figured that she didn’t need to write _Lydia_ because he knew she was the only one here anyway. So, she just went for a smiley face. It gave a lighter note to it and it was affectionate but not too much.

She sighed. It was ridiculous, _she_ was being ridiculous. She almost started it over but decided to leave it alone because she could spend hours on this note and she had more important things to do. She put her shoes on, took her purse and left.

That sounded like a plan: first, find a strength that would give her control over herself and second, come back to Stiles. It was like a to-do list, easy and organized. She liked that.

At this hour, the streets were still really quiet and empty. The sun was hitting too hard on her pale skin and hurt her eyes. She would need sunglasses and a hat if they stayed the entire week. She could start another to-do list. And sun cream, they would need sun cream. Simple considerations like that were filling her with a sense of normality she was craving. It felt good.

She decided to leave the main streets to take smaller ones where cars weren’t allowed. She entered the old city area where the alleys were all tortuous and paved. They were so narrow that she was able to touch each wall when she stood with her arms wide opened.

But, she wasn’t suffocating, she didn’t feel trapped thanks to the warm colours surrounding her. The walls were made out of beige stones. Red, orange and yellow flowers were decorating the windows and the tall buildings were allowing her to walk in their shadow.

The left wall was cold against her fingers and a delightful fresh breeze was caressing her skin. She had quickly done her hair in a bun on the top of her head and some strands were dancing in the breeze, tickling the nape of her neck and her cheeks. She could also feel the wind playing with her white dress against her bare legs.

People were starting to open their windows, taking advantage of the early hour to make fresh air come inside their homes. Lydia figured that it would certainly be the only time of the day when people would open their windows. After that, they would live in the shadow to keep their houses as cool as possible. She marvelled at the thought that it was only in those extreme conditions that people were truly living with the nature. They accepted its laws and it gave them control over their own lives. It made more sense living like this. They wanted a cool house? They had to wake up early. They had to wake up early? They should go to sleep early and they had to plan their entire day according to this. They knew how this worked and knew exactly what they could control.

And as always, knowledge was power.

Maybe that was a key. She had to find what she could control and what she couldn’t.

Loud voices made her break out of her thoughts. Kids were complaining in Spanish in one of the houses and it made her smile. Whatever the language, kids complained everywhere and always with the same voice inflections. It strangely soothed her. This was life. For those people, it was just another day. She could jump in whenever she wanted.

At the end of the alley, she saw a larger street on her left. It was so orientated that it was still in the shadow and some bakery and café were starting to open. Smell of fresh baked bread and coffee invaded her senses. Her stomach started to growl but now wasn’t the time to stop somewhere. She wanted to keep walking until her brain found a way to create serotonin without Stiles.

She went right in another narrow alley. A man in his pyjamas was standing in front of a closed window. He was begging someone on the other side of the window to open to him. He sensed a presence in the alley and turned his head toward Lydia. He smiled at her with an embarrassed grin when she passed by him. Lydia nodded and he turned back to the window to resume his begging.

She tried to muffle her laugh and kept walking.

In the distance, she started to hear the sound of water, surely a fountain. It made her realized how thirsty she was and how the stones under her flat and thin shoes were hurting her feet. The prospect of fresh water down her dry throat and on her hot skin made her shiver with anticipation. She quickened her pace.

At the end of the alley was a small square with a fountain in the middle with a stone bench all around and a café terrace that wasn’t opened yet. The fountain was protected from the sun by a tall tree with purple leaves. Lydia’s knowledge on trees was really basic and she had no idea what it was but it was beautiful.

The water wasn’t potable but she sat on the bench next to the tree and plunged her hands in. The tree shadow had protected the water from the heat and she couldn’t muffle the moan that formed in her throat at the temperature difference. She poured water down her arms and on her neck, closing her eyes at the delicious sensation. She sighed, exhaling from pleasure when she felt droplets under her dress running down her back, reaching her waist, ass and thigh. If she focused strong enough on her body, she could feel the shivers and goose bumps the cold water was leaving in its trail. She took her shoes off to wet her feet and legs. She could have stayed hours like this, enjoying something as simple as cold water in the heat.

She folded her legs on the bench, her shoes on the ground and her right hand in the water. She was absently looking at what looked like a piece of a plastic cup floating in the fountain. She was feeling better already. Something was buzzing in her skin, inside of her. She couldn’t put a finger on it yet but it was exhilarating. Time seemed to dilate itself and she lost herself in this feeling. She didn’t realize that people were starting to open the café, throwing her interrogatory glances.

Her right hand came to rest against her temple, sending another chill down her body when the cold water touched her skin. She closed her eyes at the sensation and opened them again. Her fixed stare focused on the waves in the water that were spreading at regular intervals, giving to the bit of plastic hypnotizing movements.

Without paying much attention, she calculated the frequency of each wave and the velocity ratio of the floating plastic.

There was a certain beauty in the assurance that despite everything that could happen, laws of science would always remain the same. Her environment was stable. The existence of the supernatural didn’t question the physical laws that governed the universe. The primeval conditions were constantly evolving since the big bang but the laws had always remained. Gravity. Evolution. Death. She was standing on a solid ground. A ground she had learned to understand since she was able to observe and think by herself. Why had she forgotten about that? How?

She lost herself in the memories of a very young Lydia who had read something about the divine proportion in a book about Ancient Egypt and had spent months trying to find it in all the shapes she saw in the nature or in arts.

Shapes had mesmerized her during years, and she drove her mother crazy. There was even a time where she would only dress in clothes with fractal patterns.

She smiled, plunging her hand in the water again to create more waves. Conditions were evolving but she was still able to calculate the velocity ratio of the former plastic cup.

Diverting her eyes from the water, she stared at the tree beside her, looking for fractal features on its branches and leaves.

It was a strange sensation that was spreading through her body. When she was spiralling down her emptiness, knots were forming in her chest and her skin tightened, forcing her entire being to shrink. Almost to the point where she would turn invisible to others, where she would rub out her identity to fit into the small and standardized frame that society had built.

This time, it was the exact opposite. She felt a force inside of her that softened her skin, allowing her being to shine and grow. Her body, her own skin didn’t feel like a prison. Like something unfamiliar she had to control: it was a part of her, it was _her_.

She wasn’t fooling herself. She knew that this blissful state of mind wouldn’t last but it gave her hope, it was a part of the solution and nobody would take that knowledge away from her. Not when she had put her finger on it. The solution was here, she could see it, feel it.

Slowly unfolding her legs and standing up, she realized that there were so many things she could control. She could calculate the incline of the ground under her feet or the forces that made the gravel roll when she was touching it with the tip of her shoe. The approximate number of windows in the area around her and the number of stones in the street.

She was bigger than that, she wanted to take up as much place as she could. It was filling her with a sense of stability and self-confidence that felt good and warm.

She took the first street on the right after the fountain and a book shop specialized in science caught her eyes. After a few seconds of standing in front of it, she pushed the door open. She spent maybe an hour going through the shelves and ended up buying a book about the divine proportion that she would use to learn more Spanish and the latest edition of a magazine in English about science discoveries in mathematics that mentioned her work about Riemann Hypothesis.

Outside, the heat was still bearable but had already increased. The loose strands of her hair were slightly sticking to the nape of her neck with sweat. The shops were all opened by now and the streets were busier. It wasn’t as intimate as it had been and her stomach growled again when she passed by a bakery. It was time to go back.

She found a small market in a narrow street and bought some eggs, slices of bacon, oranges, coffee, fresh baked bread and vegetables like tomatoes, red bell peppers and eggplants. She couldn’t resist buying some pastries, already picturing Stiles’s smile at the sight of those huge turnovers filled with Dulce de leche.

The market’s atmosphere with its smells, colours and foreign languages was making her happy. Genuinely happy. Life could be so easy if she wanted to.

Back at the apartment, she noticed that her note was gone. It could only mean one thing: Stiles was up and had seen it. She realized in horror that it also meant he had seen the smiley face at the end... She closed her eyes, sighing in embarrassment and heard the shower. At least, he wasn’t immediately there and if she hurried to cook their breakfast, maybe he would have forgotten about it.

She started to unpack what she had bought to make her mind busy and forget about the awkwardness of the situation.

She started to press the oranges to make fresh orange juice and cooked fried eggs with bacon for Stiles, keeping the vegetables to make an omelette. The owners of the apartment had left three handmade jams for them, and they all smelled delicious so she toasted some slices of bread.

To Lydia, cooking was a chore. It was something she had to learn and had to do every day. She never considered cooking as a way to relieve stress. It wasn’t as logical as it appears because Lydia enjoyed good meals and it happened too often that the cooking recipe wasn’t enough to actually cook a good meal. You had to put your soul in it, to improvise and it wasn’t in Lydia’s nature. Cooking frustrated her more than anything.

But cooking for two was something else and she surprised herself by actually enjoying it. Like earlier by the fountain, she let this feeling sink deep inside of her without trying to understand it. It was here and it felt good. That was all that mattered.

“I thought I heard you come home, smiley face.”

Lydia didn’t have to turn around to know that Stiles was smirking, his amused voice gave him away. She stayed focused on her pan, trying hard to erase the embarrassed blush on her cheeks. She smiled and shook her head.

“You’re hilarious, Stiles.”

“Yeah, I know. But that’s part of my charm, right?”

She heard him come closer, he must have washed his hair because she could see a towel moving from the corner of her eyes and smell the scent of his shampoo. The same she would regularly find – and maybe look for – on his pillow.

“Thanks for the breakfast, it smells good. Next time’s on me.”

“I didn’t do much, I just –“ She turned around and the sight of Stiles’s bare chest with a towel running through his hair made her forget what she wanted to say. The only ridiculous thing she could think about was that she could surely find some divine proportions on Stiles: his nose, shoulders, fingers, hands, chest, in the way his arm muscles were tensing, anywhere really. She bit her tongue to avoid asking him if she could take his body measurements and tried to get her thoughts back on track.

“It’s really just eggs, bacon and vegetables.” She stopped, nervously tying loose strands in her bun and cleared her throat. “But I have nothing against the idea of you cooking for me, just so you know.”

Her voice was still a little husky and she had said it so casually that Stiles felt goose bumps on his forearms. Just like when they had fallen asleep, Stiles was struck by this feeling of domesticity that seemed to settle so easily between them.

If he wasn’t so afraid of how she could react, he would step even closer, slide his hand in her hair and take her cherry red lips in his mouth to kiss her deeply with his other hand grabbing her waist and fisting her dress so tight it would ride up along her thigh until it would slowly reach her panties.

He gulped, trying to put on some sort of composed face but he wasn’t fooling anyone and Lydia must have noticed something because she smiled with such warmth and rosy cheeks that Stiles had to lean against the counter behind him to help his weakening knees.

Lydia eventually broke the increasing tension.

“I’m almost done.” She cleared her throat and turned around, somehow finding her willpower again. “Will you set the table outside?”

“Yeah.” He said in a low voice, clearing his throat as well.

They ate under the shadow of the big tree on the terrace. Its leaves had still an intense green shade despite the sun. A sweet and soothing scent heightened by the warm breeze emanated from big white flowers that were blossoming here and there on the tree.

Stiles asked her some questions about what she had done so early in the morning. She told him about the books she bought and it turned out Stiles knew what divine proportions and fractal features were. After that, Lydia couldn’t contain the excited nerd inside of her anymore and they analysed everything around them together.

She felt so happy and in control she even said something about his nose. He smiled, took her hand and brushed his lips over her knuckles.

They kept on talking about whatever came to their mind while finishing breakfast, only stopping once in a while to sip their coffee or blowing on it from the tip of their lips. In those quiet moments, they would let themselves be engulfed by the sounds surrounding them. The birds, the distant church bell, the noisy trucks and the lilting voices of people passing by.

Stiles had to get back inside to toast some more bread because they were eating so slowly it had turned cold. He came back with slices of bread and butter with strawberry jam and a big smile on his face. Lydia raised an interrogatory eyebrow at him.

“Why are you so happy about jam?”

“Because I noticed that you usually don’t like it and you still toasted bread. Which means you made it for me and it makes me happy.” He put down the plate on the table and sat down, still staring at Lydia with a smirk and waiting for a reaction.

“Maybe I also wanted to try it because this one’s homemade,” she said, laying stress on the _homemade_ and taking a bite in one of the bread slices.

She was slowly chewing, afraid of finding that disgusting fake-sweet taste. It wasn’t a lie; this jam did smell delicious and she wanted to try it but the sweet taste still could make her feel sick. But it didn’t, it was actually really good.

“What, Stilinski?” she asked with her hand over her mouth.

He was still grinning at her and Lydia couldn’t properly eat when people were staring at her. He took his eyes off of her to grab a bread slice and take a bite.

“All I heard was _also_.”

Lydia tried to bite back her laugh but failed to cover her smile. She stared at him, her lips in a thin line that deepened her dimples.

“Just eat.”

Stiles shook his head, still grinning.

“Yes, ma’am.”

In sixty years, when Lydia is on her death-bed, she knew she would remember this exact moment. This moment when the taste of strawberry jam ceased to be linked to her childhood, ceased to remind her how much she lost. All the pain and suffering that came with her relentless pursuit of any sense of belonging.

The taste of strawberry jam blended with the taste and smell of fresh toasted bread, the soft warmth and the sun that illuminated Granada with a light full of life and that reflected small flecks of honey in Stiles’s eyes. She could feel her senses stirring up one by one, anchoring her feet to the ground and helping her soul to expand as much as she wanted.

Maybe that was it. Maybe this was happiness: the ability to turn bad things into good ones with new and fresh memories. Better ones.

Despite her will to find happiness on her own first, she knew deep down it had something to do with this enigmatic boy in front of her who stared at her like he had always known her, like he could read in her eyes everything she tried to hide. It didn’t matter much. If she had to learn how to be happy, she might as well start here and now. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she thought.

After that, Lydia stopped asking herself so many questions and the week flew past too quickly. Stiles couldn’t take his eyes off of her. He had never seen her like that. It was like she had finally accepted the idea of letting him see through her walls and he couldn’t be more grateful.

They spent the week eating, going for walks, chatting around glasses of wine and sangria, sleeping until noon and going to bed as late as they wanted. No alarm clock, no phones to bother them.

Sometimes, in the evening, Lydia would read at loud some articles about Riemann Hypothesis in the magazine she had bought to criticise it or explain things to Stiles. It always went above his head but he listened to her anyway. He would kiss her on the brain if he could because it was the most wonderful thing he had ever seen. Her brain mesmerized him by its complex beauty, its ability to understand things that went beyond anyone’s imagination. Of course, it didn’t hurt that she had those full lips, always perfectly red that she would slightly nibble whenever she would try to find a way to make things easier to understand for him. Or this spark of excitement in her emerald green eyes.

Lydia would read until Stiles would stop asking questions and fall asleep. Sometimes with his head on her shoulder with his nose against her collarbone and his warm breath against her skin. Sometimes with his head on her lap.

It was simple and Lydia loved that. One night, as Stiles was slightly snoring on her lap, she couldn’t resist the urge to run her fingers through his soft hair. He sighed in his sleep, adjusting his head higher on her lap and Lydia smiled. She could get used to it.

But unfortunately, the spectre of the end of the week was looming over their heads, drawing always nearer. They both tried to push back that thought as far away as they could but time never stopped going by.

Lydia knew it was up to her. Whatever would happen next would be her decision. They had arrived on a Monday and had decided to leave the next Monday. It was Saturday and Lydia hadn’t made any decision.

In the afternoon, they visited the Alhambra. They were walking quietly in the crowded palace with their heads full of heavy thoughts. They stopped, sitting on a bench in the shadows of the arcades facing a long pool surrounded by jet water and palm trees.

“I can’t believe we’re here, in one of the last places bearing witness to an important age of Spanish history and I – “ Lydia sighed, shaking her head and looking around. “I mean, look, it’s gorgeous! And all I can think about is that we have this huge decision to make.”

She felt Stiles’s stare on her and turned to look at him.

“Stiles, I… I can’t. I can’t decide.”

“It’s okay.” He slid his hand in her hair and she felt the brush of his lips on her temple. She sighed and moved closer to him to lay her head on his shoulder. She closed her eyes, breathing him in and feeling her anxiety slowly fly away.

“Let’s finish up here and we’ll talk about it later, okay?”

He was whispering in her hair while rubbing her arm. Lydia could stay like that forever but she eventually nodded.

Lydia decided to bring the subject up again on their way back to the apartment after half an hour of talking about anything but that. It was hard to dive back in after a week spent somewhere safe from the world, safe from time. It was like closing their eyes right before a collision and opening them again to find that the collision hadn’t happened yet.

They went to bed and faced each other with burning eyes and their fingers intertwined. They had spoken for hours, debating on what they wanted to do and what they should do. Just saying Peter’s name was chilling Lydia to the bone and made it impossible for her to think properly. They still hadn’t made any decision.

But here, facing Stiles in the quiet darkness of their bedroom, Lydia wanted nothing but stay there for all eternity. She drifted off, barely feeling Stiles’s lips on the corner of her eyelid.

For the first time in the week, she had her nightmare again.

But it didn’t wake her up.

It was the sun penetrating in the bedroom that slowly woke her up. The sheets were cold beside her. Stiles wasn’t there and it made her chest tighten but the smile returned on her face the second she smelt pancakes.

She quickly stood up, hesitated a few seconds in front of his hoodie and put it on. She looked at her reflection in the mirror and saw that her sleeping shorts disappeared under the hoodie. It made her smile and she ran her fingers through her hair to give it some body.

She went down the stairs and found Stiles busy in the kitchen.

“It’s the second morning in a row that pancake smell wakes me up. I’m gonna get used to it, you know.”

Her voice startled Stiles who turned around quickly and almost dropped his pan.

“Wow, Lydia you – “ he was staring at her, mouth agape and unable to find any word to describe what seeing her in his hoodie with her ruffled hair and the mark of the pillow on her right cheek made him feel. He ran his hand through his hair and tried to clear his mind. “You know, I think I have the same one…” he laughed, pointing at his hoodie with the spatula he had in his hand. “But it looks way better on you than on me.”

“Does it?” she asked with a teasing smile while tying it up above her navel as well as she could. “I don’t know, maybe it’s too long.”

“Yeah,” Stiles gulped. “Definitely better.”

He lost himself in the sight of the skin above her shorts, picturing how warm it must still be, how soft it would feel under his palm… Lydia took his chin in her fingers and broke him out of his thoughts.

“Sorry,” he smiled. “You look really beautiful, you know?”

Lydia smirked and kissed him on the cheek before hopping on the kitchen counter beside him.

“Thanks.”

“So,” he cleared his throat and resumed what he was doing. “How did you sleep?”

She didn’t reply immediately, trying to steal a pancake from Stiles who pretended to hit her hand with the spatula. All of a sudden, she remembered her nightmare and froze.

“Hey, hey, Lydia, what’s wrong?”

Stiles tried to make her look at him but she seemed completely dazed

“Lydia, talk to me, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing, I – “ she finally fixed her stare on his eyes. “I had a good night’s sleep, a really good one.” She got quiet a few seconds and turned her head. “What time is it?”

“Mmh... Almost noon, why? Are you sure you’re alright?”

Her smile was so big it almost hurt. For a moment, she thought she was going to throw herself in his arms and kiss him until she couldn’t breathe anymore but she stopped herself and blurted out a laugh that was as clear as a bell and she almost didn’t recognize it as her own.

Stiles was staring at her without understanding what was going on but found himself smiling with her.

“I had a good night’s sleep, Stiles! A good night! Do you realize?”

She caught hold of his shirt and arm, still staring right into his amber eyes. Her laugh threatened to turn into sobs so she nibbled her lower lip to stifle them.

“Stiles, I… I had a nightmare and it didn’t wake me up. I don’t think that had ever happened.”

“Wait, really?” He came closer to her, his waist brushing her knee and ran his thumb on her cheek to wipe away a few tears. “That’s awesome, Lydia!” 

“The man, the… The thing…” she caught the hand he had on her cheek to keep it in place. “I think I was able to defend myself and maybe even knock him out. _Me_. I knocked _him_ out… I’m not sure, it’s a little blurry but I made it out and it’s the first time!”

Still smiling, Stiles came closer until he was trapped between her legs with his other hand on her waist.

“Do you think it means something?”

She shrugged and shook her head, unable to stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks. She fisted his shirt to make him come closer, needing his warmth all around her.

“I have no idea… The entire week was perfect.” She bit her lips again, losing herself in memories and laughed softly. “I was so happy and didn’t think about him once. I think I only had the nightmare because we spoke about Peter yesterday. Without that…” She stopped and resumed in a strangled voice. “I’m not sure I would have had any nightmare.”

Stiles wiped her tears away one more time before taking a firmer hold on her waist with both hands, the warm skin under his fingers making him want more. He was happier than ever. It had never crossed his mind that a way for her to get rid of her nightmares and of Peter was to stop thinking about them. Could it be that simple?

He didn’t say a thing, contenting himself with staring at her starry-eyed and with surely what must have been the most stupid look on his face. It was like witnessing a rebirth. _She_ really was here, in front of him. His Lydia. The one that didn’t feel the need to hide behind masks and who wasn’t swallowed by mourning and vengeance.

Lydia was waiting for a reaction and pulled at his shirt to wake him up.

“Stiles, say something!”

“I – “

“You know what?” She cut him off, too excited to restrain herself. Ideas were rushing through her head. “I think I read in the article I told you about the other night that in a few days, there will be a conference in Poland – in Warsaw if I remember correctly – with some of the researchers who worked on a project that could have destroyed mine if it hadn’t been that good…” she had said it in one breath, looking anywhere but in Stiles’s eyes that weren’t leaving her face. She laughed through her nose and smirked before glancing at his eyes. “I’d like to go there… Taunt them a little.”

He was taken by surprise and stepped back a little.

“But – “

She pulled him back and threw her arms around his neck.

“Stiles, you told me that after a week I could decide: you leave me alone or we go after Peter again, right?” She loosened her grip a little, feeling suddenly nervous by his lack of reaction.

“Yes?”

“Well, what if…” she fisted his shirt and looked down at her hands, lowering her voice as if she was afraid of what could come out of her mouth. “What if we choose option three?”

“Op… Option three?”

Stiles was fumbling for words. He never knew how to shut up and now he couldn’t speak out more than one syllable at a time. No one rendered him speechless like Lydia did.

“Yeah.” She looked up to meet his gaze and his warm smile gave her the strength she needed to articulate her thoughts. “We stop running after a ghost and you could come with me to Poland?” Her heart was beating way too fast. Why was it making her nervous? She was fidgeting with her fingers and chewing her lips. Stiles was still looking at her with his warm smile and she didn’t know what to do with that.

“Stiles?”

He didn’t understand why her voice wasn’t as steady as it should be, why it was tainted with worry and concern to the point that it quivered when she said his name. Was she afraid that he would reject her?

He took her fingers in his hands and wrapped her in his arms again, putting his hands back on her waist and moving her closer from the edge of the counter. He felt Lydia’s cheek on his collarbone and buried his nose in her hair. She had one hand behind his neck and the other one was still holding his shirt. He could smell the scent or her shampoo and the scent of the sheets on her warm skin. It was mind-boggling how she could make him lose any sense of reality just by existing. He was consumed by her simple existence. They stayed like that a little while, enjoying the warmth and erratic beating of each other’s heart.

“Stiles?”

Her voice was steadier, it made him come back to reality and he realized his hands had slid higher on her back under his hoodie.

“Stiles, your pancake is burning…”

“So?” he asked with a hoarse voice, brushing his fingers on her skin.

She giggled and turned her head upward to catch his stare.

“You woke me up with the promise of pancakes.” She lowered her voice, tracing patterns on his chest with her fingers and grinned. “I want those pancakes.”

Stiles laughed through his breath and stepped back. He teased her by slowly taking his fingers off of her skin and immediately regretted her warmth and scent. He tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and with the other hand removed the pan from the stove. Lydia nibbled at her lower lip and made him come back to her.

“Would you come with me?”

It wasn’t even a question; how could he say no? “Of course,” he answered in a breathy voice.

They smiled at each other. Stiles could feel her breath on his lips and it was heady. Her stare was going from his eyes to his lips and he was about to lean forward and kiss her when she spoke and froze him to the bones.

“Besides, you must speak a little Polish, right?”

“No, not really…”

“No? But you do have a Polish name, right? Stilinski? Isn’t it Polish?”

“Yeah, it is.” He lost his smile and stepped back, loosening his grip on Lydia. “My father had his family in Poland and my mother was Polish.” His voice quivered and he was shaking. Lydia had no idea what to do and took his hands in hers. “When she started to lose her memory, she… She would sometimes speak in Polish to us so… We had to learn. But I can’t say that I speak it.”

“Oh…” Lydia suddenly remembered this boy in middle school who had lost his mother and felt her blood run cold. “I’m sorry, Stiles. I – “ she was whispering now, afraid to talk too loud and took his hand. “I should have remembered.”

Stiles lowered his head and felt the blood pulsing through his body too quickly. His breathing was getting rougher. He hadn’t spoken about Claudia Stilinski in a long time but time couldn’t heal everything and he felt like a young boy who just lost his mum. The guilt, the crushing loneliness. Everything came back at once. He was paralysed, powerless to do anything against the images and thoughts that were rushing and howling through his mind. A thousand ghosts were pointing their bony fingers at him, biting his flesh. His father, Allison, Scott, Lydia, his mother… How many more lives had he ruined?

Anxiety was overwhelming him and he barely felt Lydia’s fingers on his cheeks. She was watching his distress helplessly and trying her best to soothe him.

Everything in his body was too tight. His chest was squeezing his heart, making it impossible for him to breathe. It was too hot, he had to remove his shirt or he would suffocate but his muscles weren’t responding anymore. Lydia took his head in her hands to make him look at her but he couldn’t focus on anything. She was talking but he had no idea what she was saying. His vision was blurry, dark dots were surrounding her perfect face and something was buzzing louder and louder in his ears.

That was it. He was going to die. He was opening his mouth, trying to breathe in but oxygen seemed to burn his lungs. There were tears in his eyes. He tried to articulate _Lydia_ but it came out as a high-pitched sound that hurt all over his chest. Pain made him close his eyes. He had one fist on his chest, beating at his heart to help it pump blood. Lydia took his other hand that was on her lap in her hand and he hung on to it like he would hang on to a lifeline. He felt his legs giving way but something was helping him to stand up.

Suddenly, he felt Lydia’s lips on his and everything froze. He held his breath, opening wide eyes.

He tried to focus on her. Everything was slowly coming back to normal. His environment was less and less blurry and the buzzing stopped, allowing him to hear Lydia breathe loudly through her nose. Her eyes were closed and he could feel her warm palms around his cheeks, the softness of her lips and the strength of her legs wrapped around his waist to steady him. She was sitting up so straight that her upper body couldn’t be closer to his and he felt her breasts pressed against his chest.

The feeling of her body all around him was making him dizzy so he closed his eyes, letting his right hand grip her left thigh. He felt her shudder and gasp. It made him crash his lips even harder on hers.

How long had they stayed like that? He had no idea but at some point, he reluctantly leaned his head back to breathe. Lydia kept her eyes closed a few seconds, as she committed the kiss she just gave him to memory. She could still feel the shape of his lips and their weight on hers.

He couldn’t tear his eyes away from hers when she opened them. Her intense stare on him was hypnotizing, she was barely blinking and kept wetting her lips. He knew this stare way too well. It was the same he had when he was gazing at her: an expression made out of wonder, adoration, love and confidence. He was drowning in the green sea of her eyes. Drunk but oddly calm.

“How… How did you do that?” He asked her in a breathy voice.

Lydia would have wanted to come up with a smart answer. She could have said that she had read somewhere that holding your breath could stop a panic attack and that when she had kissed him, he had held his breath. But her mind remained speechless and powerless. Once again, her words were fading into the deepness of his stare.

They were still pressed against each other with their noses only an inch apart. Neither of them could move and the sounds of their erratic beating hearts was all they could hear. Stiles was breathing loudly and it was intoxicating. Lydia was about to close her eyes and sigh at the feeling of his hand on her thigh trying to bring her even closer when someone rang at the door.

They stayed motionless a few seconds but the intruder rang a second time and Stiles rolled his eyes, muttering something like _God_ under his breath and lowered his head with a sigh, leaning the top of his head against Lydia’s collarbone. His soft hair tickled her chin and she smiled, nibbling at her lower lip. She took his head in her hands, making him look at her and leaned forward to crash her lips on his just a second before whispering _Go_ against the corner of his mouth with a smirk. Stiles groaned, slowly gave her a peck on the top of her nose and went to the door.

Lydia stayed on the kitchen counter, suddenly cold and unable to think about anything else but Stiles. She could still feel the weight of his hands linger on her body and the firmness of his lips on hers. She couldn’t help but nibble at them in the unconscious hope to find the taste of strawberry and coffee that Stiles had left there.

She came back to reality when she heard the slam of the door. The noise made her turn to glance out the window overlooking the street, and she saw a small group of kids in Scout’s outfits running down the hill with boxes of cookies. She softly laughed when Stiles got back in the kitchen with a cookie in his mouth and an opened box in his hand as expected. He offered her one with a smile full of adoration that melted her reluctance to eat anything with unnecessary chemicals in its ingredients. She took it, feeling her cheeks blush when his forefinger stroked hers. Stiles got back to his pancakes while Lydia looked at him and his precise movements in a daze, slowly chewing what was for some reasons the best cookie she ever ate. She eventually stood up and set the table outside. Neither of them talked about what had happened but they both felt that something had changed. Their stares were less heavy and their steps lighter.

It was too hot to go out so they spent the day inside. The half-closed shutters let a soft light in and the distant sound of kids laughing and jumping in pools filled them with a blissful feeling.

In a few hours, Lydia learnt the basic grounding in Polish and Stiles didn’t know that he could be more lost in admiration for her than he already was. Hearing her speak Polish wasn’t as hard as Stiles had feared. It was Lydia, after all.

They bought plane tickets for Warsaw without buying anything for the return.

For the first time in years, Lydia felt genuinely free. It wasn’t like what she had felt when she had decided to follow Stiles to find Peter. It was warmer. Something was buzzing underneath her skin, making her want to scream, jump and laugh until her body was exhausted.

Stiles couldn’t help the mocking grin on his face when he was seeing her fidgeting like that and she would nudge him with a dazzling smile every time. He felt such inner peace in him and it contrasted so much with his natural hyperactivity that he couldn’t do anything else but smile at the idea that maybe they were starting to have an influence on each other.

This could make him happy forever.


	9. Pythagoras

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took an unexpected direction and really challenged me so... Two things :  
> \- Any comment would make me feel really good because I seriously lack self-confidence  
> \- A gigantic hug to Tracie, I couldn't thank you enough for all your help here :)
> 
> The title and the rating have changed but it's still the same :)

Lydia was a vision.

Stiles was watching her from across the room gliding between everyone, moving with the ease of an ice skater. Whenever she would leave a group, all stares would linger on her a little while before people would resume their conversations. As if an angel had just appeared and they had to take a moment to gulp down their emotions.

How could they not look at her? She had the bearing of a queen.

Her smile was the one a monarch would give to her subjects: ruthless, superior but with enough kindness and warmth that people would seek her respect. She walked with her back straight, holding her chin up as a sign of challenge and all her movements were made with such grace it left Stiles in a daze.

He could have believed he had in front of his eyes the Lydia she used to be in high school if it wasn’t for the fact that she was acknowledging his existence with warm gazes, smiles that she used only for him and the fact that she barely wore make up.

Lydia had wanted to be bold by applying only a little mascara and her favourite red lipstick. She felt gloriously naked and oddly in control of everything.

Stiles was hypnotized by the sharp movements of her lips which had the same sensuous shade of red as her dress and made her hair look even darker than usual. She could feel Stiles’s gaze on her and once in a while, she would return his stare and wet her lips or slightly tug at them with her teeth in a teasing grin with a smile full of those dimples Stiles could die for.

Stiles wasn’t sure if she realized what she was doing but he would choke on his food every time with a mumbled _fuck_.

It had been an hour since the group had been escorted to the post-conference banquet room where a buffet was being served, and Stiles had yet to leave the appetizer table.... or _amuse-bouche_ as a grumpy old lady with a fake snobbish accent and a silk scarf had corrected him. ( _Oh, how a-moo-sing_ , he’d joked, barely restraining himself to take two napkins and make a puppet show… she didn’t think it was funny.)

He had stayed at Lydia’s side a little while but had soon realized that the salmon pate and pierogis (although he could really go for some of those mini cocktail wieners right about now) were a better company than all those old motherfuckers, all of them crowded around Lydia like flies around honey and looking at him with contempt.

_Nah, it’s jealousy, definitely jealousy_ , Stiles decided as one of those assholes threw him a glare.

It was only fair, he had it coming.

Stiles had been eyeing the appetizer table with envy since they had entered the room so, when Lydia had told him she was a little hungry, he hadn’t hesitated a second. Plus, if he was being honest, he was getting really bored with those discussions.

Lydia was in a conversation with a group of three hungry flies when he had come back and he barely had time to give her something to eat before they physically shut him out, standing before him to prevent him from getting closer to Lydia or even giving him their empty glasses and sending him away.

He had eventually given up but had met Lydia’s stare too many times to ignore the fact that she was bored.

And it was his duty to entertain her, right?

He had then decided to make a fool of himself, making faces to the appetizers, giving her lopsided smiles and feeling only satisfied when she would purse her lips with too many dimples to be serious and nod to what Stiles assumed were banalities.

She had been on the verge of blatantly laughing for a long time, and the wink he'd given her had been enough to make her snort.

Lydia Martin had _snorted_ in the middle of a mundane conversation because she had been distracted by _him_ of all people…

Asshole-fly number two had turned his head, spotted him and had glared.

So naturally, Stiles had waved his arm with a crooked smile (making Lydia nibble at her bottom lip in the process, so that was a win) and asshole-fly number one had laid his hand on his friend’s shoulder to say something to his ear, breaking their staring contest.

But the thing is, it had been _an hour_ since that had happened and Stiles was starting to feel a little jealous himself. 

Okay, maybe they weren’t all old and Lydia was indeed famous… She did receive a Field’s Medal after all.

Stiles was happy to see her glowing like that but he couldn’t help feeling a little lonely. He hated feeling like that, she didn’t owe him anything. That wasn’t how his love for her worked… But he didn’t want to go back to a place where he could only admire her from afar. He could still feel the weight of her lips on him, the embrace of her body around him and it drove him crazy. His attempts to make her laugh were nothing but driven by his need to be noticed. He wasn’t better than those pretentious dickheads _…_

He was currently gulping down his second tray of salmon-dill-goat cheese canapés when he noticed the suspicious stares people were throwing at him. He smirked and scoffed underneath his breath. Other’s opinions had never mattered to him. So, what if he was a weirdo who couldn’t take his eyes off of the only genius he knew while stuffing down a canapé every three or four seconds? Especially when the genius in question was wearing a red-fitted dress that was making his mind freeze? That was his problem.

Besides, Lydia had eyes only for a guy in a suit and Stiles was secretly seething inside. This guy was close shaven and his hair… He didn’t seem to use any gel and yet, he didn’t have any rebel lock. They were all keeping still on their own will. Was he even real? If Stiles would come closer, he was sure he could smell some after-shave or expensive cologne. Something mentholated, fresh and manly. Something smelling like power and strength.

The guy turned to take a glass of champagne and give one to Lydia. Stiles had him on full display now and snorted when his eyes fell on his breast pocket. He had a carefully folded freaking pocket-handkerchief with his fucking initials embroidered on it! Stiles couldn’t believe it.

Was it something specific to this suit? Did he ask his tailor to initial this one specifically, or did all of his suits bare his initials on his pockets squares?

“Ridiculous”, Stiles muttered between two mouthfuls of pierogis. He was probably the kind of guy who wore pairs of beige chinos with tassel loafers and burgundy cardigans on Sunday…

The guy must have told a joke involving his ridiculous cuff links and expensive watch because he was laughing – showing his perfect teeth – while waving his arm.

Stiles rolled his eyes and mimicked him with a mocking voice. “Look at me, I’m stuffy and I wear expensive shit!”

He got himself noticed by an elderly couple with coral-pink wool jackets who whispered to each other while glaring at him. He mumbled something about _assholes_ and the elderlies left with reproachful stares, letting Stiles resume his observation.

Lydia had her hand on the guy’s perfect forearm. That was Stiles’s cue.

He stepped out onto the balcony and took a deep breath before leaning against the railing. He needed to clear his head... get his mind off of monogrammed pocket square guy… and the way he made Lydia smile. Stiles shook his head. Why was this bothering him? Guys always looked at Lydia in high school. They never made him feel this way.

Of course… back then it wasn’t like she’d shown any interest in him. Now that she had…now that she’d kissed him…

Stiles groaned. Why did he have to be like this? Why did he have to be in love with Lydia freaking Martin? She could have any guy she wanted. What would make him think that she’d ever in a million years choose… him?

His phone buzzed in his pocket and part of him wanted to ignore it and continue wallowing, but he thought better of it.

_Where’d you go?_

Stiles sighed and replied, _Balcony. Needed some air._

He waited a moment for her reply, but it never came so he stuffed the phone back into his pocket and looked up at the sky. He heard the door open behind him, but he didn’t turn around. The breeze that whipped through at that exact moment wafted the scent of her perfume toward him.

“It’s quiet out here,” she said softly, as she leaned against the railing next to him.

He looked down as he replied, “It felt quiet in there too.” He felt her gaze on him and he stole a glance out of the corner of his eye instead of turning his head. Her brow was creased in confusion…. as if she was trying to figure something out.

She finally turned her head away from him. “Really? I thought it was too loud.” Stiles raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything. “I guess I’ve gotten used to it just being the two of us. I forgot how stressful working a room could be.”

Stiles scoffed. “You mean McStuffy didn’t make it any easier for you?” Even as he said it, he knew it sounded childish.

“Who?” When he turned to look back at Lydia, she was looking at him with a hint of a smile playing on her lips.

He sighed and rolled his eyes, “You know… Mr. I’ve-got-an-embroidered-handkerchief sticking out of my pocket.”

“Oh,” she laughed softly and turned away, staring at the garden bathed in the moonlight. “No… actually what was making it easier was being able to look away from those conversations and find you. Most of the time you were stuffing your face with hors d’oevres.” Lydia smiled with a faraway look in her eyes and Stiles thought that it was a smile that Lydia didn’t even realize she was making.

Her smile made him smile, and when he thought about what he must have looked like from her perspective, a laugh bubbled out of his chest. His laugh made her laugh and then soon they were just two idiots laughing on the balcony, for what was probably longer than necessary.

When they finally caught their breath, Lydia began slowly, “Yeah…I guess we were both feeling a little lonely in there, huh?”

_Loneliness._ That’s what he felt. It hit like an _Aha!_ moment. It wasn’t jealousy he’d been feeling. He was lonely. He felt like he was being ignored. But he wasn’t being ignored. In actuality, she’d been watching him all night. Maybe just as much as he had been watching her. “Yeah…” he finally agreed. “I guess so.”

They were quiet for a few moments before Lydia broke it. “McStuffy? Really?”

“You know like McDreamy or McSteamy from _Grey’s Anatomy_? It was a lame joke…”

“No, I got it. I just didn’t realize you watched _Grey’s Anatomy._ ”

Stiles shrugged, “You don’t need to watch it to get the reference.”

He regretted his words as soon as they left his mouth. Why did he have to sound this bitter, this rude about nothing when they were having a nice conversation under the moonlight? _You don’t need to watch it to get the reference_ … What kind of asshole was this harsh, this pretentious?

He glanced at her from the corner of his eyes and saw her opening her mouth to talk. “I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to be harsh… Did it come across as rude?” he cut her off before she had time to articulate something.

Lydia frowned and turned to look at him with a puzzled expression. “No… Was it supposed to be?”

“No!” He frenetically shook his head, feeling relived and hating his hyperactive brain, “Not at all… I’m just… I’ve been in a bad mood tonight.”

 “Because of McStuffy?” she asked slowly in a tentative voice.

Stiles lowered his head, “Yeah, I guess…”

“Well,” Lydia nudged him with her shoulder, making him look at her “just forget about him, I already forgot his real name… He’ll forever be McStuffy with the private yacht to me.”

Stiles snorted “Oh, because having cuff links, embroidered pocket squares and perfect hair wasn’t enough? He needed to have a private yacht?”

“Give him some rest, will you?” He raised his head, ready to apologize again, but her lips were pursed and there was a hint of laugh in her eyes. “I mean… It’s not his fault if he feels the need to over compensate, you know?”

“Lydia Martin, are you making dick jokes to make me feel better?”

“Maybe?” She started to laugh and put her hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. “Oh my god, I totally did, didn’t I?”

Stiles nodded with a lopsided smile that made her grin even more and she shook her head “I just… I don’t like seeing you like this!”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, angry at me. It reminds me of… of the day after you found me at the train station. We barely spoke for the entire car ride.” She took her eyes off of him and lost herself in the sight of the trees in front of them. “I don’t like it when you close yourself off.”

It took Stiles a moment to collect his wits and restrain himself from taking her in his arms.

“I’m not angry at you, Lydia. I’m just an idiot.”

He heard her laugh through her nose and turned to lean his back against the railing.

 “You know,” Stiles eventually said “I do actually watch _Grey’s Anatomy…_ Or did until they killed off my favorite character.”

“Ha! I knew it!” She left the railing to lean her hip against it. “Who was it?”

“I’m not gonna reveal all my embarrassing secrets at one time… You need to tell me something embarrassing too.”

Lydia nibbled at her lips and laid her chin in her hand. She turned her head to look at him and smiled. “I used to watch _One Tree Hill_ when I was working on my thesis. Your turn.”

He smirked and leaned closer to her to whisper the name in her ear.

“Really? I never would have guessed that.”

Stiles raised his eyebrows at her “Really? Lydia Martin, you’re smart and beautiful but you have so much to learn about me.”

“I guess you’re right.” She bit her lip as if internally arguing with herself, before reaching up on her tiptoes and kissing his cheek. “And I can’t wait to find out.”

At this moment, they heard the door open behind them and both turned their head at the same time. Stiles swore underneath his breath when he realized who was standing in front of them, looking at Lydia with an alluring smile: fucking McStuffy.

She must have heard him and felt his annoyance because she slightly fisted his flannel when the intruder called her name.

“Lydia, I’ve been looking for you. They served the main course a few minutes ago, some stuffed chicken and vegetables I think – “

He was cut off by Stiles who couldn’t help but burst out laughing at the word _stuffed_. Trying and failing to be discreet, he turned around to face the garden and tried to muffle his laugh. But it was contagious and Lydia had trouble staying face-stoned. She tried to make him keep quiet by bringing her hand over his mouth but it had the opposite effect.

“I’m sorry for this one,” she apologized half serious, pointing her chin toward Stiles with her hand still over his mouth, “what were you saying?”

“Huh, I have a suite reserved in the hotel, it’s the Emperor suite, the most expensive one – “

Another burst of laugh bubbled out of Stiles’s chest and Lydia had to purse her lips and nod to help refraining herself from laughing.

“Anyway,” he resumed, less confident and nervously playing with his tie, “I was thinking we could have dinner in my suite if you’d like to.”

Lydia cleared her throat to chase any trace of laughter. “Thanks, but I’m gonna stay with my friend here. He can’t be left alone too long… He can’t behave apparently…”

Stiles lifted his head and wiped his eyes that had begun to water with his sleeves “That’s so uncalled for, Lydia. I can totally behave.” His voice was hoarse from laughing and it made Lydia look at him with so much affection he completely forgot whatshisname behind him.

“Uncalled for? Can’t you wait until…” She screw up her eyes, as if trying to remember something.

“Oh my god, you really did forget his name!”

“Shut up Stiles, he’s still… not here anymore…”

Stiles turned around to look at the place where he had been standing and was now empty. They looked at each other and started to laugh again, Lydia leaning against his chest for balance.

“Everyone’s gonna hate me, you do realize that?”

“Come on, he’s never gonna tell what just happened. I know I wouldn’t.” He scoffed, shaking his head. “I can’t believe he played the _most expensive suite_ card…”

Lydia buried her face in his shirt to quietly laugh and when she lifted her head, she had tears in her eyes.

“Stiles, this is the last time I’m taking you out for such an event.”

“Oh come on, you would have died of boredom without me.”

“Maybe…”

Lydia reached for his hand to pull him back inside. “Come on. Let’s go back…except this time… I want you right next to me.”

They grabbed two glasses of champagne and sat on a couch in a quiet corner. Lydia explained to him the conversations she had had and was taking a malicious pleasure in taking down every theory she had heard in the evening, calling everyone in the room idiots.

As usual, Stiles didn’t understand everything but the champagne was slowly going to his head, making him dizzy. He was hanging on every word she was saying, immersed in the feeling of her voice that wavered slightly whenever she would let out a laugh in a fog of champagne and tiredness.

Stiles had his arm thrown on the back of the couch behind Lydia and she was slowly sinking into his side, seeking his comforting warmth with her head nuzzling closer to his chest and her hair tickling his chin. She could feel his gaze on her, on her eyes, on her lips and she wondered how she could have lived her entire life without it.

She would sometimes put a hand on his thigh to straighten up or to get closer to his ear to whisper something scandalous about one of the guests in a low and hushed voice. Lydia could feel him holding his breath and she couldn’t help but look at the overwhelmed expression in his eyes. In those moments, Stiles wanted to kiss her so badly it was taking everything in him to remember where they were.

Her face was so open, she radiated such joy that he couldn’t believe the Lydia he had in front of him was the same Lydia he had found in the cemetery several long weeks ago. He would let her go with the first shithead in a beige pair of chinos if it meant seeing her as happy as she was. ‘ _Maybe I should buy a pair of chinos'_ he thought, before quickly dismissing the idea.

They were so focused on each other they didn’t notice people had begun to leave. When a cleaning lady asked them to move aside so she could sweep under the couch, they decided it was time to head back to the small flat they had rented.

xxxxxx

Stiles drifted off so quickly it surprised Lydia who couldn’t relax her muscles. She was tossing and turning without finding a good position. It didn’t help that all she could think about was the way Stiles’s eyes hadn’t left her the entire evening. The memory made her smile at the ceiling and bite back giggles.

She was glad they hadn’t even discussed the idea to share a bed – it seemed to be a given now – but having him so close and yet so far gone in his sleep when she felt her entire body twitching with an incredible energy was frustrating her to no end.

The moonlight was bright enough to allow her to admire his adorable sleeping face with his hair all rumpled and his mouth slightly opened. She bit back the urge to take his bottom lip in her mouth while running a hand through his hair. She loved his hair, it gave him a just-out-of-bed look that was oddly endearing. She turned her back to him with a loud sigh, hoping it would help her tame the heat rushing down her body. But even in this position, her memories of the evening flooded her mind.

Making him feel alone hadn’t been her intention and it wasn’t something she had particularly enjoyed. She liked seeing him confident and happy but she had felt important. For an entire evening, she could tell and see that her actions were affecting someone. That was something she hadn’t experienced in a while.

Since they had met, she had always been able to tell that she was important to Stiles but they had always been in situations that weren’t regular. Tonight had been nothing but normal and it felt important for some reason.

His eyes hadn’t only been filled with want and lust, there had been something else that was giving her goose bumps on the forearms, making her giggle like a teenager with her face buried in the pillow.

She fell asleep around 3AM with a smile on her lips, noticing a sharp pain in her scar but forgetting it as soon as it had appeared.

A delicious smell coming from the kitchen woke her up. She slowly stood up, wearing the same smile she had had when she had fallen asleep.

Stiles had his back on her when she walked into the kitchen and hadn’t notice her right away. Many thoughts were rushing through her mind while observing him cook and humming an old Pink song with the radio next to him, swaying his hips and gesturing widely.

Happiness would surely be easier to learn than Pythagorean Theorem.

xxxxx

They practically stayed in the kitchen the entire day. Stiles hadn’t always loved cooking but despair had driven him to look for ways to empty his mind and cooking combined something useful and creative. Everything he knew, he learned it with an old notebook that had once belonged to his mother. When she was in Europe, she used to carry it with her to gather as many recipes as she could and to relate her journeys.

It was a long time since he had taken this old notebook out but being in the country where she was born must have woken up an urge to dig it out.

Stiles had spent the day cooking specialities of Poland, Serbia, Bulgaria, Greece or Netherlands and Portugal for Lydia. He had decided to stop letting jealousy or diffidence eat him up and turn him into a scared teenager.

The afternoon was slowly drawing to an end and they were settled on the couch with a mug of tea in their hands and a full stomach. Lydia was leafing through Stiles mother’s notebook and translated him some passages.

“Have you never read it aside from the recipes?” she asked after a few minutes spent in silence.

Stiles was a little taken aback by the question. He took a sip out of the tea, wincing at how cold it was now before putting it on the floor.

“No. When she died, my father and I suddenly couldn’t stand Polish anymore. But I kept the notebook. I couldn’t just throw it away.” He started fidgeting with his fingers on his lap, feeling how nervousness was constraining his voice. “We only used the recipes she had already translated. The other stuff was… too hard.”

Putting her own mug aside, Lydia took his hands in hers without giving it too much thought. It made him raise his head and look at her with soft and teary eyes.

“I’m sorry, we can talk about something else if you like.”

Lydia was gently tracing patterns on his fingers and hands. Stiles remained speechless for a while and shook his head to help him hold back the tears building up in his eyes.

“It’s fine.”

Stiles laid his head on the back of the couch and Lydia followed him, pressing her body against his with her legs folded on the couch and her head cuddled up in the crook of his neck. He could tell she was trying to reassure him with her presence and suddenly, it was like a gate had been opened and he couldn’t stop himself from talking, only taking a break to stifle the sobs in his voice.

“When my father died, I was still technically a minor so I was placed in a foster home. This notebook was the only thing reminding me of my family. When my parents first dated, they translated the recipes together. My mother would dictate to him and he would write. Looking at it soothed me, it helped me remember how my life used to be. How life could have been without the supernatural.”

He took the notebook from Lydia’s hands and showed her one page in particular. She felt his chest shake with a silent laugh and it wrung her heart to hear this laugh. It wasn’t a sound filled with joy but filed with nostalgia and long gone hopes. She pressed herself closer to him, putting her arm around his waist. He had to know she was as much there for him as he was for her and she expressed it the only way she knew how.

“I love this one. My father had started to write nonsense so my mother must have nudged him and taken the pen back from his hands. Whatever she did, it made him slip… His writing had never been really legible but this page is full of crossed out words and phrases. Then, it’s my mother’s writing. She had always taken her time when she wrote.” He paused, smiling at the sweet memories rushing through his mind. “I love this page, I used to picture the scene, their laughter… With all the crap going on around me, it was the one place I could find any sort of happiness. And Scott. We were slowly growing away from each other. It was the last thing tying me to a sense of normality.”

“Why weren’t you talking to each other anymore?”

“There was a time when everything was slowly coming back to normal after my father… died. We tried to pretend we could also come back to normal. But not long after, a lot of shit happened and Allison died. He needed to heal and guilt was gnawing me so much I couldn’t find the strength in me to talk to him about it. I should have. He needed it… We kept texting, seeing each other. We would talk about anything but what mattered, do meaningless stuff and pretend to enjoy it like playing video games or binge watching something with popcorn. But it wasn’t right, it wasn’t like it used to be. There were those dark clouds above us, those dark thoughts in both of our minds and none of us dared to talk about it. He went to college to become a vet and I couldn’t afford it so I waited until I could leave the foster home on my own and went after Peter. I was so focused on the task I had given to myself that the already tiny bond we had kept wearing thinner and thinner.”

“Did you try to get in touch with him since? Don’t you want to go back someday?”

Stiles sighed and continued in a low voice that echoed in Lydia’s ear pressed on his shoulder.

“Yeah, I tried. Many times. But I’m scared it will only make him sink back into this shit. I hope he was able to turn a new leaf, start a new life, you know? I just don’t want to destroy everything he rebuilt if he sees me again.” He took a deep breath, absently playing with one of Lydia’s locks that he kept winding and unwinding around his finger with his arm circling her shoulder. His voice was almost a whisper, as if he was telling her a secret, something he was ashamed of. “I’m not sure I even answered his last _Happy Birthday_ text.”

Lydia wanted to tell him that he was surely mistaken that letting him into her life had probably been the best idea she ever had because months ago, she still thought that whatever was happening between them wasn’t for her.

But she didn’t say anything because she wasn’t like him. Because words were scary and contained something powerful she didn’t know how to control.

She took the hand he had in her hair, undoing the knot he had made and intertwined their fingers. He laid his cheek on the top of her head and Lydia was sure she could feel him smiling. Their hands came down to rest on her thigh and Lydia squeezed it as tight as she could, hoping that her thoughts could get tattooed on his hand, go through his skin to spread in his blood, his entire body to eventually reach his mind and heart.

“Anyway,” he cleared his throat and his voice was more controlled. “I kind of left the notebook aside in my race against Peter. I was so obsessed with the idea of finding him and getting a revenge that I could spend a day, several days sometimes, without ever thinking about my mother, my father or Allison. I felt so guilty for forgetting them… You know, it’s weird how sometimes your brain makes you forget things. In the first weeks after my mother had died, I would sometimes come back from school smiling because I remembered she had said she would bake chocolate chips cookies. I had totally forgotten she had died. But the second I opened the door, I would see my father sitting at the kitchen table with his head buried in his hands and an empty whiskey bottle on the floor. Everything came rushing back in my mind. She hadn’t baked cookies since my last birthday and she was dead. Just like that, in a few seconds, all the memories would come back rushing in my mind. It hurt so much…” His voice trailed off and he gulped, waiting a few seconds to continue. “That’s what I was thinking about when I realized I hadn’t thought about Allison or my parents in a long time. I felt even more guilty because I knew Scott would never forget Allison.”

Still at a loss of words, Lydia took Stiles’s hand to her lips to kiss his knuckles almost unconsciously. A tiny gesture to erase the sadness in his hoarse voice. Stiles answered by brushing his lips over the top of her head.

“You would have hated me, you know?”

He wasn’t waiting for an answer but Lydia whispered “No, I wouldn’t have” against his fingers. Her voice was so low she wasn’t sure if he had heard her and he resumed without acknowledging her.

“I would sink into a terrifying spiral that could last days. I tried to cheer myself up with the notebook but all I saw were the memories of the people I lost. I drank too much, I wouldn’t eat anything and spent my days missing my old life. When my biggest issues were to find ways to keep still in class for an hour and-“ He abruptly stopped and scoffed. It made Lydia lift her head to look at him and understand what could have went through his mind.

He seemed to hesitate to go on but something was making his eyes sparkle with something that rendered Lydia unable to resist the urge to ask “and?”

He smiled softly, caressing her fingers in his hand. “And to catch your attention”.

The affection she felt for this strange and clumsy boy was suddenly taking up so much space in her entire being that Lydia couldn’t do anything else but freeze a few seconds before sighing and smiling widely.

Something strong was pulling her toward Stiles, making her want to taste his lips again and hide for all eternity on that couch with him. She curled up against his neck and it was almost a reflex to kiss the skin under his ear with an open mouth, to slightly lick his soft skin from the tip of her tongue.

Lydia felt rather than heard the low moan that escaped Stiles’s throat and kept on lazily kissing his neck to hear that same noise again a little louder.

It was exhilarating, like slowly getting drunk on him.

Stiles was looking at her little hand hanging tightly on his shirt to give her some balance. He was so overwhelmed with love that he was sure it must have been written all over his face. He would have wanted to confide in her more about the love he had always felt for her. Tell her that she had always been somewhere in his heart, in his mind. That in his darkest moments, when he would flood his body with cheap vodka, she was the one he would take to his bed. Her and not another redhead who never had the same strawberry blonde hair she had and who never had her mesmerizing mind. It was her he would confide in. Her name he would repeat in a breathy voice like a prayer in the dark of the night.

But it wasn’t.

It had never been her.

Still today, the same bitter taste would linger on his tongue when he would think about it again. The sickening taste of alcohol mixed with the salt of the tears he had shed in his sleep when he would wake up in a strangers’ bed. When an unknown perfume would be left on his pillow and would stick around too long.

Maybe one day he would find the courage to tell her all about it but not today.

Completely lost in his thoughts, he hadn’t noticed that a tear had started to run down his cheek, followed by another.

Lydia softly kissed his tears away from his cheeks to his eyelid and laid her head back on his shoulder when she could tell he had returned to reality.

“You have it now. You know that, right?”

Stiles lowered his head to look at her, having no idea what she was talking about.

“What?”

“My attention. You have it now.”

He answered her smile with a brush of his thumb on her cheek. It was a comfortable silence but something jolted Lydia.

“Wait,” she straightened up a little but kept her body pressed against Stiles’s. “Why did you take the notebook this morning? Did something happen?”

The concern in Lydia’s stare made Stiles widened his eyes and take her hand in his. “No, no, no! I felt great this morning. I just…” He looked at their intertwined fingers and laughed underneath his breath. “I just wanted to cook something nice for you, I don’t know...”

Lydia felt her heart skipped a beat and melted instantly. She smiled and kept her voice low.

“Well, you can do that whenever you want. But you have to tell me if I overstep some line by reading it like I did.”

“You didn’t.” He shook his head and held her chin between his fingers to make her look at him. He wanted her to understand how soothing she was for him. His deep stare made a shiver. “It’s the opposite actually. You’re giving her a new voice and it’s nice. When I look at it, I struggle to remember the details like the tone of her voice, the exact shade of her eyes. But not with your help. Besides, you’re making me enjoy Polish again and I’m so grateful for that.” He leaned forward and kissed the dimples around her smile while speaking. “You’re good at that, you know? Helping me to turn bad memories into good ones.”

He was so close to her mouth that Lydia couldn’t stop her body from reacting. She shivered and closed her eyes, almost moaning at the feeling of his warm lips lingering too close from where she needed them. It made her heart beat so fast, Lydia was sure Stiles would hear it.

“You’re good at that too.” She murmured against his cheek.

Silence filled with tension and shallow breathing stretched between the two of them. Lydia tugged at her lips with her teeth to calm her quiet panting and put her thoughts back on tracks.

“Do you want me to keep reading?”

Stiles let out the air he was holding which seemed to ease his tension. “Yeah, I’d like that.”

They changed position to get more comfortable. Stiles sat with his back against the wall, his legs parted in front of him and Lydia settled between them with her back on his chest. He put his arms around her waist and his chin on the top of her head. She was so tiny it made him smile.

Lydia began to read the pages one after the other. She would sometimes feel his lips against her skull and a few tears wetting her hair. At those moments, she would stop reading, slowly turn her head backwards until his nose would lie on her forehead. She would then wait until she felt peace and quiet overwhelm her, until the same feelings would reach him while tracing patterns on his forearm with a slight brush of her fingers.

When she could feel him relax all around her, she would resume her reading.

It was a mystery to Stiles how she always managed to appease him. It was almost supernatural.

On the last page, Lydia noticed that the writing seemed to be more hurried.

“Did your father write that?”

“No… He was terrible at speaking Polish so writing it… No, it’s-“ He took the notebook from Lydia’s hands and underlined some numbers with his fingers. “Look, it must be the date. It was…” He felt his heart stop for a second. “It was a few days before her death. She must have written it at the hospital. What does it say?”

“It’s a list of countries and places she loved and she wrote _Places to show to Miecz-_ something, I can’t read it.”

It was suddenly like someone had punched him in the guts. He had somehow managed to hold back his tears because he had already heard everything Lydia was reading. When he was a child and they were out of bed time stories, she would tell him about her youth in Europe.

But this was new. It had been on this blank page for over twenty years, waiting for him to read it, to give life to those simple words and he had never seen it. He had never known that in her last half-lucid moments, she had wanted to show him the places she grew up in. A deafening guilt was making his ears buzz. Guilt at the idea that he had never paid enough attention to his mother’s notebook, only using it for his own benefits. Never trying to understand what it had meant to her on her death bed. The tears he had tried to hold back were running down his cheeks and he tried to wipe them off with his sleeves in a silent crying.

Lydia felt powerless and rolled over, straightening a little up to face him.

“Stiles, what’s wrong?”

He looked down, wiping more tears off and cleared his throat.

“Mieczyslaw. That’s… That’s my name.”

Realization hit her. She wanted to know how to stop his tears, know the words that would make him feel better but she didn’t so she curled up against him with her head nuzzling against his chest and her hand over his heart that was beating a little too fast.

They stayed curled up in each other until his tears wore off.

When his chest was no longer shaking with sobs and Lydia felt the warmth of his hand on her cheek, she raised her head and smiled at the look of gratitude in his eyes. Lydia felt her own heart beat too loud in her ears. She couldn’t take it anymore. The tug tying her to his magnetic eyes was pulling too hard on her chest. Those days, it had felt like a hook getting caught on her heart and pulling, pulling, pulling… Until all she could do to ease the aching was kiss him to gather enough of him to heal the wounds behind her sternum.

So, she did.

Her stare drifted to his parted lips and she couldn’t tell if it was her imagination playing her but it felt like he was pulling her toward him. It was like when she was a kid and wanted to extinguish a candle with her fingers. Scary but exciting and anticipation running through her veins.

She wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, not daring to meet his stare and hurriedly crushed them against his.

He gasped but didn’t move, causing her stomach to turn into a cold stone and drop. She closed her eyes and leaned back, ready to stand up and hide in the bathroom to undo the knots building everywhere in her gut.

But feeling something tugging at her forearm, she opened her eyes and saw his stare. It was so soft and calm that it erased all her doubts and she leaned forward again, slowly taking his lips in her mouth one after the other. She couldn’t help but sigh in relief and contentment when he cupped her jaw and delicately kissed her back. Time seemed to expand. Everything was blurry except them and the heat rushing through their veins.

She felt his mouth opening and his wet tongue licking at her lips. The guttural moan that escaped Stiles’s mouth when Lydia let her tongue meet his made her press her body closer to him and tilt her head to deepen the kiss with one of her hands grasping tightly at his hair. Stiles’s hands were on her waist and she could tell he was fighting the urge to let them wander. His shyness made her smile against his lips and she had to stop kissing him a second.

She was overwhelmed with warm and gooey feelings. If she had to describe them, she would say that they were made of some thick and sweet syrup, something that would stick to everything it would touch and numb every pain, everything that wouldn’t be an echo of her heart screaming and beating for Stiles.

She took another second gaze at Stiles’s eyes. The despair and sadness had been replaced by something that darkened his stare and that made Lydia want to crawl under his skin. Without giving her more time, he crushed his lips against hers with more frantic gesture, kissing her with an opened mouth and breathy sighs that made Lydia shiver.

She could have stayed like that her entire life. With his tongue sliding from her lips to her mouth, his teeth slightly nibbling at her lips, his fingers grazing her ass and his hands caressing the small of her back, waist, cheeks and gripping the roots of her hair to pull her closer.

Lydia quickly realized that her mind was slowly drifting somewhere else, that she could easily get lost in the feelings of his touch. His hands had left her waist but she still felt them there. The ghost of his strokes lingered everywhere. Her side was still tingling, still waiting for his hands to go higher under her shirt and cup her breast.

She felt her heart quicken, it was intoxicating and she was actually losing herself in those feelings like she always had. Those hands could have belonged to a random guy she would have picked up in a bar, it would have been the same. It wasn’t right. He wasn’t a random guy, he was Stiles. The man she had been too afraid to kiss on a rainy day weeks ago.

Needing his stare to anchor her to the ground, she laid her forehead on his and nuzzled the bridge of his nose with hers to catch his attention. He opened his eyes and time seemed to stop again. She couldn’t help but letting out a laughing breath. It was unreal. Time didn’t stop in real life. It happened in books and movies, not in real life. Not to her. And yet, it felt like it.

 “What?” she heard him whisper in his smile.

“Nothing,” she tilted her head to brush her lips against his thumb at the corner of her mouth, already feeling better. “You’re unreal, you know that?”

He laughed through his breath and she smiled, titling her head a little more to slowly take his thumb in her mouth in a teasing movement. She looked at him straight in the eyes and his reactions were a reward in themselves for her boldness. She saw him get wrecked in a second, emitting a groan from the deep of his throat she immediately knew she would want to hear again. He briefly closed his eyes and when he opened them, they were clouded with pure lust. She took his thumb between her teeth and licked the tip with her tongue, hollowing her cheeks.

Stiles reacted within seconds and pulled her toward him, grabbing her waist with a hand that must have covered half of her back, making her feel safer she had ever felt. He took her chin between his fingers and bore his stare in her eyes. She slightly trembled under his gaze, his eager stare sending a thunder of shivers down her stomach and lower belly. The nervous chuckle that was about to cross her lips turned into a moan the second his tongue parted her willing lips and his hands grabbed her ass more firmly. She felt them on her thighs and she moved up in his lap to straddle him, pushing her hips against him. His mouth left her own to kiss her neck, biting faintly at the skin under her jaw.

She closed her eyes, letting herself drown in the delicious inflections of Stiles’s voice… The sounds of his sighs when her hands brushed the skin of his stomach above the waist of his pants… Or the melody of his groans when she started to slowly grind against him feeling him hard underneath her.

Her head was buried in his hair and she lost track of time again.

That, she could do. She knew how to control what was happening and it made her feel powerful.

She started to think about her next move. What kind of Lydia was appropriate here? A flow of ideas came rushing through her mind. According to what she knew about him, what their relationship seemed to be, what she felt about him, what he seemed to feel about her,… There were tones and tones of possibilities and Lydia had to choose wisely.

“Hey, Lydia?” His voice was deep, filled with lust and it jolted her body with electricity but the hint of concern in it broke her out of her trance.

His nose nuzzled up her ear.

“You have no idea how much it pains me to ask you this but – “ A rush of guilt started to course through her veins, freezing her like a sudden cold shower. She readjusted herself on top of him, hiding her face from his stare in his neck. “Lydia?” His palm on her cheek warmed her up, helping her to hum in response. “We don’t have to do anything you don’t want to, you know?” His voice had lost its husky tone, it had been replaced with something hurt and borderline ashamed. Lydia felt her heart break into pieces. How could she do that to him? “I – “ He trailed off, she hadn’t said anything and his fingers started to nervously play with the hem of her shirt. “You’re thinking too loudly, Lydia,” he feigned a laugh,  “what’s wrong?”

She slowly sat up on his lap, letting her hand trail on his chest and keeping her stare down to avoid his eyes.

“Lydia, talk to me, please.” He cupped her jaw, sitting up as well and made her look at him. She closed her eyes and regretted opening them the second she did because it wasn’t just his eyes, it was him. He was hurt, feeling rejected. She had done it.

“Did I do something wrong?”

She shook her head before he even ended his question.

“No, no, you didn’t. It’s just – “ She closed her eyes again. She couldn’t look at him. She had to tell him but she couldn’t do it while looking at his hurt stare. “It feels wrong. I… I don’t want to fake anything with you.” He froze underneath her, dropping his hand to sit straighter.

Her eyes flew open and she watched him put a pillow on his crotch, a look of confusion and rejection written all over his face.

“Oh… I’m… I’m sorry.”

Lydia realized her mistake so she took his hand in hers. “No, no, not like that! I… I want you.”

“Lydia, you’re…” He let out a breath. His hurt expression seemed to fade away a little but he ran a hand over his face, keeping his hand on his mouth as if it would help his thoughts and breath to stay inside. He looked at her tiny hand making her way between his fingers grasping the pillow and at her apologetic smile. How could he resist her? Letting out another soft fake laugh and intertwining his fingers with hers, he continued, almost ashamed of what he was going to say. “You’re kind of giving me mixed signals here, you know?”

Nerves were eating Lydia up; her heart was threatening to smash her ribcage with its erratic and strong pounding. She knew how important it was that she made it clear for him that he had never been the problem. She couldn’t lose him.

“I’m sorry,” she said in a low voice with her eyes down. She took a breath and met his stare. “Let me start over, okay?”

He nodded and removed his legs from underneath her. The lack of any contact with him made her chin tremble with stifled sobs.

“I want you, Stiles.” Those words made him raise his head and look at her with so much adoration she felt her confidence and steady tone falter. He took her hand back in his and folded his legs on the couch, making their knees bump.

“You do?”

“Yeah, I do. A lot actually.” She smiled at her shy admission and at the feeling of Stiles’s touch. Because she felt like she had to make up for what had happened, she continued. “I want to kiss you, feel you on me, inside of me, underneath me, everywhere.” She bit her lips, blushing hard at her blunt words.

Stiles let out a breath and cupped her cheek. He leaned forward and faintly brushed his lips on hers. They sighed, their hands still intertwined on the pillow on Stiles’s lap.

“But?” he asked against her mouth.

“But, I don’t know how to lose control with you yet.” She said it in one breath and leaned back. “I always leaned on the codes I learnt. Always lost myself in the same feelings. It’s like – “ She trailed off and blushed. A feeling of self-consciousness was spreading inside of her, she couldn’t tell him.

“Lydia, it’s okay.” She was looking down and felt his warm lips kissing her bottom lip, then the other. “I won’t judge, I promise.”

She took a deep breath and continued. “I’ve always liked feeling numb. And I know how to get there… To an orgasm that would numb everything else. So, I used to control things: every emotion, every move, every situation…” She sighed in exasperation, running a hand through her hair. “I almost had mental note cards about the positions I could use in a given situation with a given kind of man – “ Her voice lowered and trailed off, something inside of her was encouraging her to continue but her heart was still beating too hard to make it easy to focus on what she was saying.

Maybe that was the point.

Lose focus.

Lose control.

She closed her eyes and let the words flow out of her mouth. “I don’t want that with you. I want to be able to not think about anything else but you and just enjoy every moment without asking myself about what’s appropriate or not, about what position would be more effective. I don’t want to feel numb anymore, I want to feel alive. I want it genuine with you, even if it’s not perfect… Or maybe it will be perfect just because of that. That’s why I can’t. Because I shouldn’t care about the result, I should care about you. Because for once, it matters.” She opened her eyes, bright with unshed tears. “You matter. You’re not just another one, you’re you. And you matter. So much.”

Stiles’s mind remained blank. He looked at her, mouth agape and eyes wide opened. It felt a lot like her way to tell him she loved him and it was overwhelming. She looked so frail and self-conscious it wrecked his heart. On her face was written the slow realization of what she had said, what it implied and she looked like she wanted to hide from his burning gaze. Her eyes diverted from his. Stiles had to talk, to say something but he couldn’t think of anything. He stood still and she eventually stilled too, both silently letting Lydia’s words sink in their skins, mingle with Stiles’s stares to build an armour around them both, something strong enough to protect their raw and bare bodies from anything.

Stiles shook himself out of his frozen state to avoid letting her think he was rejecting her and leaned forward to take her face in his hands and kiss her firmly. She let out a sob and a few tears. Stiles swept it off with his thumb and leaned his forehead against hers.

“God Lydia, you…” he paused to catch his breath. “You matter so much too, you don’t have to apologize or explain yourself, you know? You don’t owe me anything, it’s fine.”

She kissed the corner of his mouth and smiled. “Really?”

“Yes, really. We don’t have to rush anything, you know? We’ll take it slow, it’s alright.”

His hoarse voice made her tighten her grasp on his hand and she moved closer to him, laying her knees on the pillow to rest her forehead against his.

“But…” His groan made her lean a little back and she followed his pointed look toward his crotch. “If we want to have an actual conversation, you’re gonna have to stay away from me a little while or I’m gonna have to quickly go to the bathroom to...” He laughed through his breath. “God, I can’t believe how smooth I am…”

She smiled and slowly batted her eyelashes, looking at him from below with the most innocent look she could master. “Or… I could give you a hand with it?”

Stiles choked and raised his head so quickly he almost bumped against Lydia’s nose.

“You… What?”

She bit back a laugh and resumed teasingly with her fingers wandering slowly on the pillow. “I could help you with your… situation.” Stiles’s jaw was slack and she let herself get caught in the look of pure awe he was throwing at her. “If you want to, of course.”

“But you just said – “

She cut him off with a quick kiss. “I just said that I couldn’t let myself go with you yet. I didn’t say anything about the other way around.”

“Oh…”

“Let me take care of you, Stiles.”

Her voice was almost pleading and he couldn’t stand the idea of her having to beg for it. He took her face between his hands, looking more confident. “I’m in if you’re in but I need you to be certain that’s what you want.”

She nodded.

“I am.”

Stiles let Lydia coax his mouth open with her tongue and shamelessly moaned when he felt her coming closer to him, pressing her breast against his chest and replacing the pillow with her thigh between his parted legs.

“It’s so, so hard to tell you _no_ , you know?” he whispered against her neck in a hoarser voice that send shivers down Lydia’s spine. She made him sit up straighter and sat on his lap with her thighs on both sides of his hips. She lowered her head until she felt his nose against her ear.

“How _hard_ exactly?”

Stiles was out of breath. She felt his muscles twitch when her left hand teased the sensitive skin under the waistband of his briefs. He let her unbuckle his pants and lifted his hips to help her roll them down.

Lydia discovered that the look in his eyes at this moment wasn’t like anything she had ever seen. This look only intensified her resolve. He wasn’t looking at her like she owed him something for leading him on, he was looking at her like he couldn’t believe she was real, like he thought she was worth all the troubles.

She gulped down her emotions and kissed him slowly, licking into his mouth and swallowing his moans when she started to move against him. She stroked him leisurely, enjoying the feeling of his hands gripping her hips tighter and tighter, making her feel small and safe.

Lydia couldn’t stand to be away from his stare any longer so she took his neck in her right hand and laid her forehead against him. Their noses were crushing against each other every time Lydia would quicken the pace. She was sure she could come from the single feeling of his breathy panting against her parted lips. But maybe another time, it wasn’t about her. It couldn’t be about her.

Stiles let out a throaty groan and his head fell back against the back of the couch, closing his eyes. Lydia followed him, pressing her body closer against him and laying her free hand beside his head for some leverage while her hips were grinding faster and faster against him, following the rhythm he had set with his hands, chasing his moans that were getting huskier with each stroke of her hand.

“Lyds, you’re so fucking  beautiful… I’m gonna…”

“Look at me, please, look at me.”

He opened his eyes and it was all there. Everything that made Lydia feel whole, that made her inside melt and her heart beat too fast. It was all there in those hazel eyes that shone too bright to be from this Earth. How did she deserve him? What had she done to deserve this broken angel who could have anything he wanted from life and still settled for her?

He came with her name on the tip of his tongue and she swallowed this sound with a deep, wet and sloppy kiss. She felt tears prickle at the corner of her eyes and buried her face in his perfectly rumpled hair, waiting for him to catch his breath.

Suddenly feeling exhausted for no obvious reason, she started to laugh nervously against his skin, wondering why she was feeling this blissful when she hadn’t let herself orgasm.

“Lyds, are you alright?”

She felt his hand stroke her neck and her entire body softened.

“Yeah, I am.” She was drowning herself in his scent when she suddenly remembered something. “Why don’t you like your hair?”

She straightened up in his lap, her left hand resting on his stomach.

“What?” He was looking at her with his brow creased in confusion and scoffed.

“You said McStuffy had perfect hair… _You_ have perfect hair, why don’t you like it?” She paused to catch her breath. “It’s soft and perfect to run my hand through it or to nuzzle up against it.”

Stiles smiled, too exhausted to actually laugh and took the hand she had laid next to his head to his lips to kiss her fingers one by one.

“Can we not talk about him right now?”

“I’m not talking about him,” she laughed softly, running her right hand through his hair to make her point, “I’m talking about your hair.”

“Well, I don’t know… It’s not that I hate it, it’s just that it doesn’t particularly look good. I always comb it with my fingers.”

“I like it.”

They looked at each other a few seconds before laughing a little too loudly for the situation. Lydia cuddled up against him and Stiles broke the silence.

“Why are we talking about hair?”

“I don’t know, I’m exhausted,” she said in a sleepy and laughing voice with her eyes closed.

Lydia let out a sigh of contentment when she felt his finger stroke the skin above her hip “What about you, Lyds?” he brushed his lips teasingly against her earlobe “Sure you don’t want me to do something for you?”

She lifted her head slightly.

“I’ve never been one to deny myself an orgasm”, she let out a faint laugh through her breath, “but I have to start breaking some patterns. So,” she tried to catch his stare and kissed him briefly “I’m gonna say no for now.” She paused a few seconds and grinned. “Well, dream-Stiles is surely gonna give me a hand tonight, but – “

“Oh, so there’s a dream-Stiles?” his smirk made her roll her eyes.

“You don’t know him? Tall, lean, steady gesture, no sarcasm, focused and with dexterous fingers… No?”

“Well,” he leaned closer to whisper in her ear. “If dream-Stiles isn’t enough, you know where to find me.”

He winked at her and moved to stand up to give her a tissue and go to the bathroom to wash himself quickly, letting a smiling Lydia alone on the couch.

When he came back, wearing sweatpants and a fitted dark blue shirt, Lydia was reading his mother’s notebook. She raised an eye to take him in and felt blood throbbing in her ear and lower between her legs.

“Why do you look so good in sweatpants?” The words had escaped her mouth without her consent but his sudden blush made it impossible to regret them.

“I have to keep up with dream-Stiles, you know?” He sat beside her and put his arm around her shoulder. Lydia chuckled and leaned her head against his neck, sighing at the feeling of his lips against her hair.

She had to make sure he had understood her and fought her own instinct of self-preservation when she opened her mouth with a shaking voice “You know I’m not rejecting you, right?”

Stiles tightened his embrace and took in his hand her fingers tangled with the rubber bands of his sweatpants.

“Yeah, I get it, don’t worry.” He leaned his cheek on her head and continued in a low voice that filled Lydia with so much serenity she closed her eyes to let herself sink in the feeling. “Not that it would be selfish of you to let me go down on you, I get what it feels like to struggle against control over your own body and mind. And I know how scary it can be when you don’t feel like yourself when it matters. You’re on the edge of something, you’re starting to learn how to be yourself again and you don’t want to screw this up.” He faintly laughed. “Well, the idea that it concerns me is slightly mind-blowing but I get your point. Trust me, I get it. I’ve been there.”

Lydia stroked his forearm, tracing the lines of his tattoo with her fingers. “I hope I’ll be able to say _I’ve been there_ one day…” She trailed off, insecurity in her voice.

“I know you will. You can do anything you want, don’t start doubting yourself.”

She raised her head to look at him. His stare was steady and full of trust. It almost made Lydia cry, nobody had ever put so much faith in her. She kissed him, sighing against his lips.

“Thanks.” There were so many meanings hidden behind this tiny word it felt heavier than it was when it escaped her whispering mouth. She hoped his ear was big enough to let them all enter his mind and sink inside him.

“Anytime.”

He kissed her one more time, feeling that he would never get tired of her lips. They stayed curled up against each other a moment when Lydia eventually talked with the notebook in her hands.

“You know, you still have time to discover everything she wanted to show you. I mean,” she straightened a little up against him. “We didn’t buy any return ticket. You could visit all those countries and make your own notebook.”

Stiles remained quiet a little while.

“If I did, would you come with me?” he asked, his voice hesitant.

She scoffed, not waiting another second to reply. “Of course, silly. You can’t calculate the square of the hypotenuse with just one side, can you?”

“What?”

He looked so confused it made Lydia giggle.

“Do you know how hot you look when you have no idea what I’m talking about?”

“Oh so, now, my lack of scholarly education is attractive?”

“Very much.” She leaned to take his bottom lip in her mouth. “Didn’t you hear of the Pythagorean Theorem?”

“I’ve heard that you don’t stop panic attacks with kisses but I’m willing to let you keep on doing it if you come with me.” He peppered his reply with kisses on her lips and nose.

Lydia felt her cheeks redden under his smirking gaze. She nudged him, faking a big laugh and stood up, mumbling something in Polish that made Stiles smile.

She came back with two glasses of water and sat back beside him without trying to conceal her grin.

They started to discuss everything they would have to do to plan their trip. After a little while, excitement took hold of Lydia. She stood up to grab paper and wrote to-do lists for everything. She printed itineraries, maps and lists of hotels. Stiles was watching her in total awe of her organization methods. He tried to help her but she kept pushing him away saying that he was making a mess with his random colour codes. (Who used blue because it was _pretty_? Blue was clearly for minor comments.)

The question of the money was a big issue. Such a trip would cost them a lot and they didn’t have much. Lydia offered to use what she had received with her Field’s Medal but Stiles refused, she could still need it. They decided to stay a few months in Poland to look for jobs and save money. They would also have to find a place to rent, something not too expensive.

Excitement wore them down and they fell asleep on the couch with the TV on and papers scattered everywhere around them. It was safe here. With Stiles’s arm circling around her waist, his hand between her breasts and his leg between hers, it was like nothing bad could ever happen again. His hard chest protected her like a wall.

One day, she would be bare behind this wall, she would have stripped down to her simple soul. She would have handed the last brick of her own façade to Stiles. Maybe they wouldn’t even need any wall after that. Maybe they would enjoy the sun and grow a garden together instead of a wall.

She had no idea what tomorrow would look like but as long as his scent would still invade her senses, she knew she would be alright.

She tightened her embrace, closed her eyes and it felt like her scar was closing up a little more.


	10. And it was all yellow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from "Yellow" by Coldpaly
> 
> Quick disclaimer: I took some liberties with the mythology Teen Wolf used for banshees and I will take more.  
> Thanks again Tracie for your help and thanks to all of you who keep reading it and leave kuddos :)

Cheesiness in movies and books had never bothered Stiles.

Whether he liked it or not, he was a romantic. How could he not be after spending most of his life in love with the same girl? 

As a kid, he liked to fantasize about the kind of chocolate he could offer her on Valentine’s Day.

As a teenager, about the kind of flowers he should buy her if he ever had the guts to ask her to prom.

Later, when she wasn’t there anymore and he was in a foster home, he day dreamt about the city she was in, her friends, her clothes, which pastry made her smile the most.

When he was chasing a monster around the world, he allowed himself to rest his mind from time to time and imagine a life in which he would know what kind of comfort food she liked after a long day at work.

Stiles had pictured everything, had thought about metaphors for her when he was more or less drunk, got emotional over poems and landscapes that reminded him of her. He had seen her in so many clouds, constellations and unknown faces in the crowd it would be hypocritical of him to deny his helpless romanticism.

That was why it bothered him so much when people would use romantic tropes to sell something.

That was also why he hated most romantic songs that were used in weddings.

Five years ago, he had met those people who were nothing but pragmatic and used _Yellow_ by Coldplay for their first dance on their wedding day.

They were this kind of people who had figured everything out, they had found who they were, where they belonged. They were finally at peace. Happy.

Stiles had always claimed that romantic songs weren’t for those people.

They were for the lost ones, the dreamers, the ones who hold onto an idea of happiness, never knowing if they would find it.

Never knowing if it ever existed.

Never at peace.

Those songs were for the ones who fooled themselves into believing in a mirage. Those who kept asking themselves _What if_?

Not for the people who had decided that the answers they had found were satisfying enough.

It wasn’t all _yellow_ for them.

They didn’t want a yellow life anyway.

They wanted fences, perfectly manicured lawns and neutral colours.

Not that Stiles found it bad, but yellow was for people like him.

For people who would willingly let one bright colour blind them for the rest of eternity.

 _It was all yellow_.

It didn’t mean “I found happiness with you. All my troubles are behind me now.”

It meant something else.

It meant it was all you.

I close my eyes, I still see you.

I press my palms on my eyes after looking to long at the sun, it’s still your shape that appears behind my eyelids in those big dark dots.

I breathe, it’s your scent I’m inhaling.

My future is you.

My past is just a succession of seconds spent longing for you, waiting for you to cross my path and fill the void, spread your roots inside.

Not only do I dream about you, but you are what my dreams are made of.

What my thoughts are made of.

My sighs.

I stared so long at your smile in the stars,

Breathed so many times the carbon monoxide you exhaled somewhere

That even my cells could be your own.

I’m blinded by you.

And it’s all yellow.

 

Yellow.

The colour of those months spent in a lost farm somewhere around Krakow.

If someone would ask Stiles to sum up those months in three words, he would find a way to get around the question.

Those months spent giving hay to cows, feeding hens, waking up early and going late to bed had been nothing else but the secret ways of the universe to bring Lydia’s orbit closer to his.

So, if he had to choose three words, he would narrow it down to one that weighed like a million.

Lydia.

Lydia and everything he kept discovering about her daily habits. He was astounded by her most ordinary actions, catching sight of every little thing all starry-eyed and mouth agape.

She was filling his days, constantly occupying his mind.

They were quickly hired at a farm. Lydia, to help with the administrative work, while Stiles did manual labor. The job came with a 21 square meter tiny flat that the farmers rented in exchange of nine extra hours of work a week.

Usually, Stiles hated waking up early. He was used to it, but he had always hated waking up when some others were going to bed.

But since he was sharing a bed with a strawberry blonde goddess, it wasn’t a problem anymore.

He often woke up with a few strands of her hair tickling his nose, her adorable sleeping face turned toward him. She always looked so peaceful it was breathtaking. He would stare at her in wonder until the weight of his eyes made her open her own. She would whisper a low _morning_ in a voice full of sunshine and a smile devoid of any filter. Stiles could read so many things in this smile he felt almost guilty, like he was invading her intimacy without her realizing it. But then, she would kiss him lazily and go back to sleep for a few more hours, erasing his doubts and making the earth a better place.

Some days, Lydia would get out of bed at the same time he did or a little earlier to prepare breakfast. She would make coffee and place the eggs and bacon next to the stove. Never forgetting to take the butter out of the fridge to give it time to soften.

Stiles understood very quickly that all those thoughtful gestures were her way of expressing her happiness and her affection for him. So, he would kiss her and bring back flowers for her at the end of his day, never failing to tell her she was the eighth wonder of the world.

There was nothing like seeing her roll her eyes and make fun of his sappiness with a big smile she wasn’t even trying to hide anymore.

They had one day off in their week and after a month of good work, Stiles managed to get an extra morning off. Those mornings were the best thing that could have ever happened to him.

They allowed him to know that Lydia needed exactly fourteen minutes in the bathroom and that she liked to eat her breakfast first. He woke up at the same time she did to heat up the hot water tank while she ate to save her from waiting too long for her shower. When she would leave to go to work, he would always kiss her at the front door, still in his pyjamas and feeling like a stay-at-home husband.

For one moment, it was their life and he would revel in this thought.

He knew that the first thing she did when she would come back home was to take her shoes off and throw them haphazardly next to the front door. He knew it because at the end of the day, he would always find them at the same place. The first time, he got scared that something had happened, that Peter or someone had found them and that she had to fight because such a mess wasn’t very Lydia-like. But he had found her on their bed, dozing and radiant, hugging his pillow tight against her chest. He had let out the breath he had been holding and everything was perfect in the world again.

Day after day, Stiles discovered little habits that contradicted her love for tidiness and organization. He enjoyed making her realize them to see her cheeks redden in embarrassment and hear her trying to get herself out of it.

She could lay her glass on the wooden table without thinking about consequences, like the condensation printing the shape of the glass on the furniture.

Just like her shoes, her jacket would be often carelessly thrown on the back of a chair and she would forget it for a few days until she would throw another jacket on top of it and begin to look for the first one without having any idea of its location. Stiles always knew where it was but kept teasing her, only helping her when she would shut him up with a kiss, her hands gripping at his shirt.

She didn’t always throw out the cartons of yogurt, leaving them on the table after breakfast, and would always put the egg boxes with the rest of the recycling instead of its own designated bin.

It was funny how she could forget little things like that, but she could remember every mathematical formula she’d ever learned.

Those _bugs_ like Lydia called them were so tiny and domestic it only made her more perfect in his eyes.

Stiles paid attention to everything, it had always been like that anyway.

Since he had understood that having a sheriff for a father meant that he could listen to his conversations to discover the most wicked things about the town, he had spent his life being hyperaware of his environment.

There was a time when it had been a curse. He would start at any unexpected sound, having to use sleeping pills to not wake up in the night. Always carrying the bruises that his nightmares left under his eyes with their bony fingers.

But those days were behind him and his observant nature was nothing but a blessing now.

He understood one day that his constant presence, his relentless attention to details were helping Lydia to stay grounded. Whenever he would see her stare turn distant, whenever she seemed to lose her grip on reality and let her mind wander too far away, he would anchor her back to him and lead her back to existence with simple remarks about things she said she wanted to do or wanted to explain to him.

Among other things, getting her to focus on reading to him or cooking with him always worked.

The day they celebrated their first substantial saving with an expensive bottle of wine and a good meal, Lydia told him with teary eyes that she was afraid of destroying him, that she was afraid of not giving him as much as he was giving her, that she was afraid of not knowing if she was still someone without him, that he deserved someone real, not the shadow of an old school crush.

Not a damaged girl who had built a wall so thick around her she was afraid she may have rotted behind it, suffocated with the lack of oxygen and turned translucent without any light.

He told her to get his wallet and to open it.

She did and let out a sob mixed with a shy laughing breath.

“You kept it?” She asked with a shaking voice, unable to take her eyes off the note with the smiley face she had written on their first morning in Granada. “Why?” She raised her head to see him smiling at her with his usual fondness that made her melt.

“Because that’s who you are, Lyds.” He took her hands in his, trying to make her focus on him. “Because you’re not just the idea of an old school crush, you’re an actual person who helps me remember how life could be. I kept it because _this_ – “ He let go of her hands to take the note from her. “ _This_ is who I want to remember when you’ll realize what an idiot I am and how wonderful your life could be – “

“No, Stiles, I – “

He cut her off, shaking his head.

“Lydia, listen to me, please.” He took his chair to sit closer to her, nesting her hands in his own again. “This is who I want to remember when you’ll have recovered from everything and leave to live your life. An independent Lydia, strong and confident enough to draw a smiley face on a note.” They both laughed through their breath and Lydia looked down.

“But, Stiles – “

“But mostly,” he took her chin between his fingers, cutting her off again. “Happy. I want to remember how happy you were, how carefree you could let yourself be when you managed to tune out all those voices in your head, this ache in your chest, this nagging pain on your hip.” He let his fingers trail over her shirt to trace the scar that had been driving her crazy lately. Lydia shuddered and quickly wiped off a tear on her cheek. Stiles gulped and resumed in a hushed voice. “It makes me feel alive. _You_ make me feel alive in a way I thought I would never know again. I was dead inside, Lydia. Before I met you, I was a shadow, some ghost haunting nameless cities, looking for another ghost. I changed my name so many times I can’t count. I’ve been everything, did every possible job. I forgot who I was. And you help me remember. I kept the note because one day, I know you’ll leave and I’ll be at peace with that because you’re giving me so much that I can’t bear the idea of you staying with me out of habit. You deserve more, you deserve the world. And I’m just an idiot holding onto you to keep his head out of the water. You let me do it for now and I’m so grateful. So, when you’ll decide that’s enough, I’ll still have your smiley-face. You’re real Lydia, you just don’t know your shape yet. You didn’t rot behind a wall you would have built. At worst, you hid yourself behind venetian blinds and you’re learning how to open them. That’s all.”

Silence stretched a few seconds between them before Lydia opened her mouth and quickly dried her eyes.

“Stiles,” she shook her head, gripping tightly at his hands and spoke slowly. “I’m not leaving you.”

“But you will.”

“I’m not. I won’t. Not today, not tomorrow….”

Her chin was trembling a little with stifled sobs but there was so much determination in her teary stare that Stiles couldn’t do anything else but believe her. He cupped her jaw, kissing her slowly on her already parted lips. Lydia sighed against his mouth and closed her eyes. She laid her forehead against his and whispered.

“I’m not leaving you, okay?”

“You’re not?”

“I’m not.”

“You’re not.”

They kissed again, not knowing who’s tears left this salty taste on their lips.

When they eventually leaned back on their chair, still holding firmly onto each other, Lydia let out a laughing sob.

“I got mascara all over your face, I’m sorry.” Stiles laughed, letting Lydia clean his face with her thumb. “I must look like a panda.”

They snorted and Stiles took a tissue to wipe off the mascara under Lydia’s eyes. “A sexy panda then.”

It made Lydia’s lips stretch in a thin smile.

“It scares me how much I need you,” Lydia whispered, breaking the silence.

“I know. I feel the same sometimes… But we’ll learn.” Stiles leaned forward to take her in his arms, burying his face in her hair. “We’ll learn together, okay?”

He felt her nod against his neck and continued “Besides, a little co-dependency never killed anyone, right?”

She snorted and left the comfort of his shoulder to roll her eyes and kiss his smirk away.

Yellow.

It really was all yellow.

 

xxxxxx

 

On a Friday night, one of the American farmworkers got into an accident and had to be brought to the hospital. He couldn’t speak Polish so Lydia was asked to come with him to help with translations. She left a note for Stiles, telling him not to worry if he didn’t see her when he came back.

After Lydia explained what happened to one of the nurses and helped filling out all the necessary forms, she was asked to sit in the waiting room.

She had never liked hospitals. Despite herself, she would always be brought back to the night Peter attacked her. But this place, this room in particular was making her more uncomfortable than any other hospital she had seen.

The long and thin neon lamps on the ceiling bathed the room in a harsh white and greenish light, making everyone look more tired and nauseous than they probably were. Every once in a while, a cold draft would bring a smell of medicine and disinfecting product.

Not a single plant, only a few plastic chairs arranged against the walls with a coffee table at the centre and months old magazines.

Grey walls. Grey floor. No windows.

Lydia shuddered and adjusted herself on her seat. She was starting to feel physically uncomfortable and it was getting harder and harder to not scratch her itching scar.

Time was going by very slowly. Doctors and nurses would come and go without paying the slightest attention to those people who were doing nothing else but waiting.

Lydia was starting to doze off when her phone rang, startling everyone in the quiet room. They all glared at her but her smile grew instantly when she saw who the intruder was.

“Hey babe, is everything alright?” Hearing Stiles’s voice warmed her up immediately.

“Babe?” she scoffed, “If we are giving in to nicknames, I’m vetoing this one.”

“Don’t blame me, the friend of the guy who had the accident told us the incredible story of the lucky bastard who got to go to the hospital with a redheaded babe… I’ll spare you the details but the word _babe_ was used several times and I can’t get it out of my head.” He laughed softly, “I tried to explain to him that your hair was actually strawberry blonde and that you had a Field’s Medal but he didn’t seem to get anything I was saying.”

“Stiles, -“

Everyone around Lydia looked pissed. Stiles had the habit to speak loudly when he would tell a story and the room was so quiet she was sure they all could hear him. She tried to get his attention but he kept rambling on.

“Some guys are just the worst, you know? And then, the farmer’s wife came to talk to me and you know what she told me? She speaks a little English and – “

He was cut off by a groan that escaped Lydia’s lips. Her scar was starting to burn.

“Lydia? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Stiles, I – “ People were starting to show their exasperation so she kept her voice to the bare minimum. “I have to hang up, I’m making too much noise.”

“Wait – “

She hung up, smiling apologetically to no one in particular. Her phone rang with a message a second after.

Stiles – _What’s wrong?_

Lydia couldn’t help but smile fondly.

Lydia – _I told you, it’s nothing. My scar is just a little itchy._

Stiles – _A little? That wasn’t a *little groan*, that was the same noise you made the other night when your scar was burning_.

She didn’t answer right away, losing herself in the memory of Stiles’s cold lips on her burning hip.

Stiles – _Lydia?_

Stiles – _Lydia, answer me._

Stiles – _I’m not gonna stop until you answer._

Stiles – _Is your scar burning again?_

Lydia – _Yes. But I’m fine._

Stiles – _Are you?_

Lydia rolled her eyes and smiled. He wouldn’t let it go, she knew it.

Lydia – _I’m fine but it’s starting to burn, my skin is on fire and I can’t go outside because I have to wait here. Doctors could come any minute._

Stiles – _You’re sure I can’t call you?_

Lydia – _Yes, Stiles. I’ll be fine, don’t worry._

Stiles – _You remember what I did last time?_

Stiles – _It worked, right?_

Stiles – _You could try to picture it._

Stiles – _You know, power of imagination and all…_

Her eyes were almost watery at this point and she hissed in pain. But she nibbled at her lips to bite back a smile that would have looked far too suspicious because the memories quickly flooded her mind and she eventually closed her eyes, letting them invade her senses.

Without knowing why, her scar had begun to be itchier. Everyday a little more. That night, it had begun to burn, making it impossible to fall asleep and making it harder and harder to breathe. Her constant tossing and turning had woken up Stiles.

They had taken a look at her scar and he had covered his mouth with his hand to hide the fact the he was freaking out because it was swollen and redder than ever, almost black. He had tried to use a wet washcloth to cool her skin down but she couldn’t stand any fabric. So, he had done the only thing that had come to his mind and used his tongue and mouth instead.

Lydia could still feel his hand trailing goose bumps on her stomach and his lips slowly wetting and kissing her scar. His nose would nudge the underside of her breast every time he would get to the top of her ribcage and she vividly remembered trying to conceal any moan that could betray any sign that she was really enjoying it.

She could still feel his wet tongue going all the way along her scar, along her hip. His mouth alternating between kissing her skin and licking it. His big hands pinning her waist down and his strong and safe body above her own. She had felt her own body soften and let itself get modelled by him. Her skin giving up, being all his.

She inhaled, exhaled and without her noticing, the burning sensation slowly wore off. When it became bearable again, she opened her eyes and realized her phone had been buzzing in her hands the entire time. Stiles had been rambling on about things he had read about the power of the human mind before starting to use his freaking-out-text-tone because she wasn’t answering.

Lydia – _You know, I’m trying to remember but I’m not sure I remember correctly._

Lydia – _Maybe you could remind me when I get home?_

She laughed to herself and quickly typed something else to avoid making him think she was flirting with him over texts in a _hospital_. Besides, people were starting to throw questioning looks at her.

Lydia – _No, but for real, don’t worry. It worked last time and I’m actually feeling better._

Stiles – _Okay, good._

Stiles – _I can refresh your memory whenever you want, you know…_

Stiles – _Just ask_

Stiles – _If you want to_

Stiles - _Of course_

A nervous chuckle escaped Lydia’s mouth. She could almost picture him sighing in annoyance and cursing himself for sending those texts.

Lydia – _I’ll keep that in mind ;)_

A man frowned in front of her when she raised her head, smiling and faintly blushing.

Lydia – _You have to stop making me laugh, I’m really making enemies here._

Stiles – _I’m not sorry, not gonna lie_.

Stiles – _Do you really feel better?_

Stiles – _You’re not lying?_

Lydia – _I’m not lying. I really feel better_

Lydia – _Thank you…_

Stiles – _My pleasure_.

Stiles - _;)_

The sigh she let out was purposely loud this time and she didn’t lift her head to see the reactions of her neighbour. She was overwhelmed with affection for her sweet dork and she wasn’t going to conceal it any longer.

Lydia – _You should go to sleep. You must be exhausted._

Stiles – _Nah, we have tomorrow off, it’s alright._

Stiles – _Oh and I haven’t finished my story about the farmers’ wife!_

Stiles – _So, she came to me and tried to explain as best as she could in English that my "woman" was at the hospital but that I shouldn't worry. Cute, right?_

Lydia – _Oh, so I’m your woman now?_

Stiles – _I knew you would like it :)_

They kept on texting until there wasn’t any burning or itching sensation in Lydia’s body. When he told her his phone was about to die and his stomach was starting to growl, she felt as relaxed as if he had actually been there.

The glacial atmosphere was still chilling her to the bone but the ghost of Stiles’s touch was lingering all over her, protecting her somehow, providing her warmth.

In the background, the regular and distant _beep_ of a machine played a morbid lullaby and Lydia felt herself drifting off to sleep again, closing her eyes longer and longer, opening them slower and slower. Her eyelids seemed to weigh heavier each time.

After a while, she opened her eyes and found herself standing in front of a door. She looked around, panicked and with no idea about where she could be, with no memory of getting up.

Her stare returned to the door.

Some strange force was pulling her toward this room, and she was unable to stop herself from opening the door and stepping inside.

There was a man at a young girl’s bedside. He raised his head when he saw Lydia coming in and smiled at her.

She lifted her head and met his stare. It seemed to break the spell she was under because she quickly shook her head, blinked a few times before grasping where she was.

“Sorry, I- “ She was going to resume in English before shaking her head once again, cursing her brain that seemed to be slower than usual. “Przepraszam - “

“It’s okay, you can speak English,” the man had cut her off with a perfect accent, which clearly indicated that he was a native English speaker. “Can I help you?”

“I’m sorry, I… I shouldn’t have come in. Sorry”

Lydia started to walk back to the door, feeling embarrassed and abashed at what had made her open the door.

“No, stay. Maybe I can help you.”

“Help me?”

“Yes, you did come in for a reason, right?”

“I… I’m not sure, actually.”

“Then stay.”

Her eyes drifted to the young girl on the bed. The force she had felt was drawing her closer to this girl.

“You can come closer.”

The man’s deep voice broke her out of her trance and she realized she had taken steps forward.

There was something about this man. She wanted to trust him and she knew she could. It was a strange sensation.

His face was round and his deep brown eyes were intensely fixated on her. She didn’t feel uncomfortable under his stare. It was the kind of look she missed her entire childhood, the one a father would reserve for his daughter.

He was holding out his hand and she wanted to grab it.

Something flickered in his eyes, as if he was trying to put a name on her face but she quickly disregarded the thought that this man might know her. How would it be possible?

Her eyes drifted to the young girl who hadn’t opened her eyes and all the sudden, she saw herself on a similar bed when she was a teenager and had been attacked by Peter. Just after her short talk with the policeman, she had been brought to the hospital and hadn’t woken up for weeks. It had taken so long for her skin to scar that she had been in a constant state of overtiredness after that.

She was staring at the girl, forgetting about the man a few seconds.

“What happened to her?”

“I think you can guess.”

Lydia felt her heart quicken and she looked at the man with wide opened eyes. Could he read her mind? Did he actually know her? She suddenly wanted to go, leave this room and those walls that seemed to move closer and closer.

“I’m sorry?”

The man smiled at her and took her hand. His hand was warm and firm which oddly seemed to be enough to soothe her immediately.

“Don’t be afraid, I mean you no harm. I promise. This girl is a friend of a young boy I know very well. She’s been attacked, bitten…” He paused, looking intently at Lydia, almost as if he hesitated to go on. “You know what I mean, right?”

Lydia’s mouth was dry, she had never met someone beside Stiles who knew about the supernatural. It was making her dizzy, a strange feeling made of both excitement and anxiety. She contented herself with a slight nod.

“The same thing happened to you, right? You didn’t turn.”

“How… How do you know?”

He smiled at her secretively.

“Let’s say that I notice things. I’ve lived my entire life in this world, I know its codes. And - “ He trailed off, scanning her face before resuming. “You remind me of someone I tried to help years ago when I was still in California. A teenage girl had been bitten but she didn’t turn.”

Lydia nodded, barely paying attention to the inquiring looks the man kept giving her.

“Do you know what’s going to happen?” she asked, pointing vaguely at the girl but hoping the answer could apply to her as well.

“Yes and no… I have my suspicions.” He turned his head to look at the girl and lay his hand over hers. “She’s been there for more than a week and she isn’t waking up. But she isn’t dying either. It’s impossible for the bite to have zero effect… If you’re not dead, it must create some bond between you and death. Some sort of connection.” He paused and raised his head to look at Lydia again, “You can feel it when someone is in danger or is about to die, right?”

She nodded again and looked down. A wave of sadness overwhelmed her at the thought of Allison and the agonizing pain she had felt when she had died. Her scar started to pull and she winced.

“I’m sorry,” the man said, taking her hands in his again. The same sensation of serenity flooded her body and mind. “It wasn’t my intention to bring back painful memories.”

She remained silent a little while and when she had collected her wits, she remembered what Stiles had once said to her. Something about her being manipulated by Peter to help him come back to life.

“What do you mean by _connection_?”

“Well… You have some kind of link between our world and death. As if you were able to draw energy from each of the worlds and interact with both.

“And this connection… Would it be possible for me to use it to resurrect someone?”

The man stiffened his back “What do you mean?”

She inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to gather all the details from Stiles’s story and to ignore the sharp pain on her hip. “I don’t remember anything but I’ve been told that the man… or whatever he is… died shortly after biting me. But he still found a way to enter my mind or something and manipulated me so I could help him resurrect.” She paused a moment, struggling to read the expression on the man’s face and continued with an indecisive voice. Maybe she shouldn’t confide in this stranger but she was dying to find the still missing pieces of the giant puzzle that was her life. “I was wondering if this could have something to do with this connection.”

He stared at her, frowning and seemed to lose himself in his reflection, in a memory.

“I guess so, yes…” He smiled faintly before standing up slowly to pace around the small room with his arms crossed over his chest. His thoughts seemed to take shape as he talked. “I asked myself a similar question years ago… But I never found any solid answer.” He paused to look at her briefly with a fixed stare and continued. “If that’s what happened, it would mean that in order to live, he would still need you. He would need to draw energy _from_ you, from this connection to stay alive.” He stopped to look at her, talking a little slower. “If that’s what happened, you must have lived with this negative energy constantly surrounding you… creating some kind of… inexplicable void. The more he would move closer to life, the more you would near this void… preventing you from creating any form of positive energy or experiencing happiness. He would always swallow it. But I may be mistaken, I don’t feel this darkness around you.”

Lydia was speechless. Her mind was blank, her mouth dry and it felt like her entire body was just a giant burning scar. This total stranger she had met minutes ago who knew nothing about her had just summarized her entire existence.

All of a sudden, it became too much. The pain spread in her entire body like a bolt of lightning and she hissed in agony, biting the inside of her cheek to muffle the scream that was about to burst out of her throat.

Feeling that her legs were giving way, she bent over her knees, one of her hand grabbing her waist and the other one reaching for something to hold on, only finding thin air. She was about to give up, fall and scream with all her strength when she felt strong arms pulling her up and sitting her on a chair.

She tried to open her eyes but everything was blurry behind the tears that had flooded them. Two silhouettes were standing in front of her but the buzzing in her ears was too loud to hear what they were saying. There were voices in her head trying to scream louder than all the others, trying to get her attention. Lydia was certain that if she couldn’t make them stop, they would eventually crush her brain. Her eyes fell closed and she found herself in front of the monster of her nightmares. She screamed in terror and agony and the monster seemed to falter, the image blurred and when her eyes slowly opened, she realized she had been repeating over and over the same name. _Allison_.

The pain was slowly fading away.

In front of her, the man was watching her in concern and a boy who must have been the same age as the girl in the bed was kneeling in front of her. He had taken her face between his hand and his forehead was creased in concentration. Lydia gasped when she noticed his glowing yellow eyes and the black veins on his arms.

The man laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder, telling him to stop in Polish with a low and reassuring voice. The boy released her head, took a step back and sighed, looking exhausted.

“What… what happened?” Lydia didn’t recognize her voice. It was hoarse and she had to clear her throat to speak audibly.

“That’s Eliot,” the man still had his hand on the boy’s shoulder and Lydia nodded, grateful without knowing why exactly. “And I’m Alan, I didn’t even introduce myself.”

Eliot looked as if he was about to pass out, so Alan took a chair and made him sit, giving him water from a bottle on the night stand.

“Lydia,” she managed to articulate before taking the glass of water Alan offered her. She met his stare and that same look of recognition flickered in his eyes.

“Eliot’s the boy I was telling you about, Lydia,” Alan resumed with the same deep and steady voice that made her feel taken care of. “He has some… supernatural abilities. He’s a werewolf. He came in just when you started to pass out and tried to take your pain away.”

Lydia stared at him wide-eyed, thanking him in Polish but he was still too exhausted to talk and just nodded with a faint smile. “How… how can he do that?” she asked, turning her gaze toward Alan.

He shrugged, “I don’t know how exactly but I guess it has something to do with the fact that werewolves are able to sense emotions. If they concentrate enough, they can manipulate this energy and transform it somehow. But,“ he cleared his throat and took a stool to sit next to Lydia. “Does this happen a lot?”

She lost herself in her thoughts, nibbling at her lip and trying to make sense out of everything she had felt in the last few minutes and started to explain as much as she could everything she knew, launching into details about her scar that used to pull whenever she would feel an emptiness inside of her, whenever she would have nightmares about the monster and that seemed to pull harder lately, almost to the point of burning for no apparent reason.

Alan stood up and began to slowly pace again.

“You’re saying that you used to have nightmares about the werewolf that bit you? And that it made your scar twinge?”

Lydia silently nodded, waiting for him to unravel the threads for her.

“Are you sure they were just nightmares?”

She shuddered, remembering how real some of her nightmares would feel, how sometimes she wouldn’t know if she was the one making decisions for her actions. “No. They were something else. They felt… like reality. Would it be possible?”

Alan shrugged and looked apologetically at her. “I have no idea, I’m sorry. It’s possible though. But you say that now, you can feel pain without having those nightmares?” He barely gave her the time to nod before resuming. “Would it be possible that you found a way to fight back?” He asked after stopping in front of the window.

“What do you mean?”

He turned to look at her and stepped forward. “I told you that I couldn’t feel any darkness around you and it seems that the pain in your scar isn’t linked anymore to the void you felt. The aching burn you’re feeling could be your body reacting to an attack, the consequence of your body trying to protect you, to keep you grounded and avoid letting yourself drown when he tries to reach out. Like an allergic reaction.”

Lydia shrugged, smiling faintly. “It may sound idiotic, but… I think I found a source of light, something stronger than this darkness.” Her stare turned distant and she sighed, feeling like her entire body and soul were aching for Stiles. She resumed with a smile in her voice “It’s like the minute I decided to focus on something else, on someone else than me, I learnt how to breathe again.”

Alan gazed at her with warm eyes and nodded, smiling at her the way Lydia had always imagined a proud father would smile at his kid.

“Let me tell you a story. There’s a really young boy in this hospital who told it to me a few days ago. He has a degenerative illness and the doctors think he won’t live more than two more years. He told me that his parents were farmers and had a farm with a big henhouse. An epidemic had broken out not so long ago and had killed all the hens. One cock managed to survive though. The boy was scared for it because he knew that hens and cocks weren’t solitary animals and usually, when they would find themselves alone, they would let themselves die. But, he had heard something about a hen that had lost its entire family and had found itself alone. It had started to let itself starve out but had a resistant metabolism. Farmers kept feeding it, but they would always find the seeds untouched. Time went by and one day, the feeding trough was empty. The hen had eaten, had just forgotten its resolve and started to live again. The boy hoped that his cock would do the same thing.” Alan paused a few seconds to smile with a faraway look. “And do you know how he concluded his story? He told me that sometimes, happiness wasn’t as hard as it seemed. You need to drop what’s bothering you, letting it trail somewhere behind and you learn how to live with this weight. Sometimes, you just need to give yourself enough time to learn how to forget.”


	11. The universe within reach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope it was worth the wait...
> 
> Once again thanks to Tracie and her fabulous patience and help and thanks to all of you for still reading it and leaving kudos or comments :)

Lydia had spent so much time talking to Alan, asking him all the questions that were still unanswered, that when she came back to the waiting room, she was told that the farmworker had been released and found his own way back to the farm.

She took a taxi, gave her address and remained silent the entire drive, deep in thoughts.

She wasn’t seeing or hearing anything and Alan’s words kept looping in her head. She barely paid attention to the streetlights regularly bathing the back of the driver’s head in a pale yellowish light or to the radio crackling the same folk tune, over and over again in the quietness of the car.

Even if Alan hadn’t been able to guarantee her anything, his answers had echoed in her. He had confirmed what she had been hoping to be true for a while. Being near Stiles was helping her to fight against the monster.

Her light in the darkness. Her frail ray of sunlight that had no idea what a wonder of nature he was. Heaven-sent. Ignoring his strength, his power to pierce through the thickest clouds and light up the sky in pink, yellow and orange during long and heavy rains.

The one that was making her slowly accept the idea that everything was still possible, that the world was hers, that the Moon could be within her reach if she wanted it.

But she didn’t want it.

She wanted to promise him the Earth and share the stars with him, travel astride on the back of a comet to pick up some asteroids between Mars and Jupiter. Sit on the verge of the Milky Way and observe the galaxies slow dancing and spinning around until they irremediably collide, shaking everything down to the atoms contained in all things to eventually create more universes to explore.

As far back as Lydia could remember, something had always helped her understand the world, understand some things faster than anyone else. The backseat she was on, her hair, the streetlights along the road, the doe that ran to hide in the forest, the lion that roared, the dust at her feet, the air she breathed, the Moon, the Sun, the Earth… Everything, everything was made out of the same raw material, the same atoms.

So, when she came back to their apartment and caught sight of Stiles struggling to keep his eyes opened while watching something he probably didn’t understand on the television, Lydia could swear she saw the light of a glowing sun reflect in his eyes.

The quiet slam of the door made him turn his head and he sent her a radiant smile, telling her he had left lasagnas on the table for her.

It was so unaffected and yet so intimate that Lydia couldn’t stop the warmth she felt in her chest to completely overwhelm her, forbidding her to react with anything more than a smile. At this moment, the ground around them could have collapsed and the roof could have been swept away by a tornado, nothing would have diverted her attention from the simplicity of his words and the universe of possibilities they were hiding.

It was elementary for him to stay awake until she came back, elementary to make sure she would have something to eat at the end of her day.

And the pull in her chest was nothing but elementary.

The apartment was so small it took Lydia four steps to reach the couch and kiss him, sighing and whispering an almost inaudible “thank you” against the corner of his mouth. She smiled as he interweaved his fingers with her locks, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear and kissed her cheek with a brush of his lips.

Lydia straightened up to head to the open kitchen and heat up her dinner. She came back behind the couch and slowly ran her hand back and forth through Stiles’s hair in the meantime. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of his body dissolving into millions of shivers. Lydia kept absently going, lulled by his sighs until the microwave broke them out of their trance.

Stiles felt her fingers leave his scalp and he held her wrist, kissing it with a sleepy smile that would always weaken Lydia’s knees. She bent forward, leaning on the back of the couch on each side of his head and kissed him deeply, the backward angle forcing Stiles to lift his chin a little.

She grabbed her plate, a glass of water and came back to the couch, sitting next to him and setting down her glass on the small coffee table.

“What are you watching?” She scoffed as a man with a hat that must have belonged to a long-gone ancestor appeared on the screen and whispered something about an imminent danger before remaining silent as the cameraman made a close-up on his fixed stare.

Stiles shrugged, half asleep and half laughing, “I have honestly no idea… I think it’s a series of documentaries about apes around the world or something… This guy is crazy, he filmed gorillas earlier. They are fucking scary!” Lydia chuckled and looked at him as something sparkled in his eyes and he turned his head toward her, grinning, “Do you think were-gorillas exist?”

She shook her head, laughing softly, “You know, I met my first werewolf at the hospital today.”

“You…” Stiles blinked a few times, giving himself time to process the new information before straightening up with a start. “What?”

She laid a reassuring hand on his forearm, smiling at him and she launched into the details of her strange encounter while finishing her dinner.

Once the plate was laid on the coffee table, she leaned closer to Stiles, nuzzling her head in the crook of his neck and stretching her legs out on his lap.

He placed his cheek against her hair, letting her voice engulf his entire being. His fingers began to absently trace circles and zigzags against her legs and knees that she had freed from their thin panty hose a little earlier.

He listened to her talking, knowing that if he had been less tired, he may have been more concerned about that man popping up out of nowhere with all the answers. But it was impossible for him to focus on an idea more than a few seconds. Not with the warmth of Lydia’s skin under his palms. Not with the feeling of her body constantly pressing closer against his own, making the soft fabric of her skirt hike slowly up.

It would be a thought for future-Stiles.

Lydia felt his fingers grasping more tightly at her calves, massaging in small circles the muscles she knew where sore from walking in high heels all day long and couldn’t stop her voice faltering slightly.

She wasn’t paying attention to the muffled _mmh_ Stiles was regularly answering but at one point, she felt two of his nails brush the skin under her knees and she realized that none of them had talked in a while. Her blood pulsed faster through her body and she held her breath for a second, feeling warmth spreading everywhere. Absently, her mouth nuzzled up against his neck and her lips parted in a silent gasp when his fingers tentatively separated her legs right under her knees, making her skin erupt in goose bumps and her heart beat harder.

She would have gladly exchanged every single shudder that had woken her up too often in a sweat for an eternity of those shivers. If she could have exchanged the memory of Peter’s claws flaying and disemboweling her for entire pages covered in memories of those fingers that seemed to always leave an electric imprint in their wake on her skin, she would have done it in a snap.

She shifted her left leg against his chest and felt Stiles hold his breath when he let his hand slide against her inner thigh, barely grazing her skin.

When she raised her head to look at him, she didn’t want to smile flirtatiously at him or whisper things in his ear in a teasing voice. Never had she been more serious, felt this vulnerable and open. For the first time, she realized she had no idea what to do and her brain seemed to have left her alone, with no questions to answer. The same solemnity could be read on Stiles’s feature, his eyes displaying the same vulnerability.

Her lips hesitantly brushed his, just like she had done when she had kissed a boy for the first time. Slowly and with her eyes wide opened to be sure that all the details would be etched on her memory. Stiles slid his hand from the inside of her thigh to her knee before cupping her cheek to pull her closer to him and eventually kissed her with that same hesitant look.

Lydia was slowly realizing that this kiss had nothing to do with the ones they had already shared. There was no urgency, no despair or the excuse of daily habits. She felt a gnawing rumble deep inside of her that wanted to come out. Her skin tingled at the mere prospect of being touched again by those hands that must have belonged to a painter or a musician in a former life. Those hands that she would allow to play against her body as much as they would want until they would give her a new shape. A more ethereal one maybe.

She leaned forward again and had to close her eyes after having spent too much time staring at the sun hidden in his irises. Something soft and wet brushed her lips and she smiled, pressing her entire body closer to his until she felt a warm breath graze the tip of her nose. Slowly, so Lydia didn’t notice at first, Stiles began to stroke his nose against hers and she let out a laughing sigh full of affection when she realized that the one who had glided his hand higher on her upper thigh to hike the rest of her skirt fabric up was giving her the most innocent Eskimo kiss.

Everything was happening in slow motion. She could feel each nerve, every inch of her skin being reawakened by his strokes and she let herself get completely carried away without having a single idea about what sounds were coming out of her mouth. She knew she was letting out soft moans and sighs against his lips when she was feeling his fingers going back and forth between her knee and her inner thigh but her brain couldn’t go farther than the mere realization.

The old Lydia would have laughed at her for being so willing and pliable in his arms but it didn’t matter. Nothing else mattered now because at that moment, there was nothing clearer than the words “being alive”, something the old Lydia never truly understood. It wasn’t just a biological state: the ability to grow, metabolize, adapt, reproduce and respond to stimuli. It was more than that. Because at that moment, there was no biological reason for her blood to pulse strong through her veins or for this adrenaline to flood her body.

No other reason than the need to feel Stiles’s touch everywhere and _feel_ alive.

Even the sensation of the time passing by was different. It was all happening around a few moments of consciousness that were quickly swallowed up by something more deep-rooted.

Time didn’t exist anymore. It was slowed down, stopped and accelerated together but mostly, it didn’t control anything. As if they had opened a door in the space-time continuum to build a nest that would only belong to them.

Lydia knew that at one moment, she had opened her mouth to taste his tongue against hers and she had felt an overwhelming emotion, making her almost cry while confessing in a voice barely audible and filled with something reverential “You taste like home”.

As if the word _home_ had once had a meaning to her, as if it wasn’t new for her to feel like that.

As if all this emptiness that had built around and inside her over the years had only existed to give Stiles enough space to leave his joys, his pains and spread his roots where he had always belonged.

At that moment, Stiles had his right arm around her shoulders to press her body closer against his. His other arm was laying against her right leg, his hand following the crease of her hip under her panties’s lace. He leaned forward to lay his forehead against hers and replied in a panting voice, knowing that he wasn’t making any sense.

He told her about the scent of her shampoo and of her perfume that had both disappeared, vanished in her wake during the day to be replaced with a scent that was more personal, intimate. His favourite scent. He told her about her make-up that had almost entirely faded at this hour of the day, showing the faint redness of her skin and the light rings under her eyes, making her even prettier, more real.

Lydia heard all the _I love you’s_ hiding behind those words, those _I love you’s_ that Stiles kept screaming at the top of his lungs and stunning her. To be sure that he knew he had been heard, that she was there to delicately catch those frail words and send them back to him in the most beautiful case she could find, she told him she wouldn’t need any make-up to conceal any sign of tiredness when he would come back earlier in the evening and leave later in the morning because she never slept better than when he was by her side the entire night.

It almost took Stiles’s breath away and he kissed her without any hesitation, trying to find in her mouth the air he was missing. He heard her sighing his name and felt his muscles twitch when her fingers brushed the skin under his navel and lower.

He hoisted her up on his lap before delicately laying her head against one of the couch pillows. Incapable of moving, he remained motionless, gazing at her in wonder from above. His Lydia, his miracle of nature who didn’t belong to anyone else but herself and yet who was too afraid to let herself go, fearing to break him. Losing himself in the wet green of her eyes and in her smile filled with promises, he barely felt her legs tighten their grip around his hips. It took an affectionate soft laugh from Lydia to make him aware of her hands unbuttoning her blouse under his astonished gaze.

She slowly straightened up to get rid of the blouse and took Stiles’s face in her hands in the same movement, kissing his nose and his lips while laying him down against her. His fingers grazed her skin from her hip to her breast and she whispered his name in a sigh when his hand cupped her left breast under the delicate black lace before getting completely rid of it.

He kissed her deeply and laid kisses over her jaw, her neck, lingering on her collarbone. Her lips stretched in a smile when she felt his tongue gliding all along her scar, imitating what he had done to ease her aches but finally wrapping her breast in a hot and wet embrace. If she had been in another mood, she would have make a sarcastic comment about it, making him notice that he had definitely not done that last time but Stiles didn’t even have a lopsided smile when he lifted his head. There was something almost holy in the way he looked at her, as if he wasn’t worthy of her smile. So instead, she tried to kiss his doubts away, tried to convey with loving strokes on his chest and sides how much she wanted him, how much she _needed_ him.

Stiles kept worshiping Lydia’s skin with kisses. He was relishing the thought that her taste would linger on his tongue for days. The warm taste underneath her breasts, the softness of her shoulders and the slightly saltier taste of sweat where her clothes and underwear had left light red marks on her skin. He couldn’t help but smirk a little when he slid his tongue around and under her navel, making her hips jerk with anticipation. She whispered a low and laughing “shut up” that turned into a noise she didn’t recognize when she felt his fingers hook her underwear and slowly rolling them down her legs, teasing the skin on her thighs, before replacing it with his lips.

She would have been unable to describe what happened next. All she felt was the softness of Stiles’s hair under her left palm, the warmth of his tongue trying to find the angles that made her moan louder and how right it felt to have his fingers pumping inside of her.

Her entire body was nothing but violent jerks and electricity. She wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. Automatically, she covered her eyes with her right arm, as if she was ashamed of the louder moans that were coming out of her throat when Stiles sped the pace up in this perfect angle.

When she felt her entire body tense deliciously and it all became too much and not enough at the same time, she faintly pulled at the root of his hair, panting and trying to articulate his name. It was enough to have him rush at her lips, uncover her eyes and kiss her long and deep while clinging to her right leg resting along his hip.

Lydia managed somehow to make him understand that he was wearing too many clothes because the next thing she saw was his cheeks take a faint red shade. “But I don’t have any… you know…”

He looked down and Lydia instantly melted. “You’re adorable.” She laughed softly and took his chin in her fingers to kiss him. “I…” Lydia trailed off, feeling her own cheeks redden. “I may have bought some the other day…”

It was Stiles turn to laugh softly. “You did?”

“Yeah, they’re in my nightstand. So… We could… Go over there. If you want to?” She nervously tugged at her bottom lip with her teeth and eventually grinned when Stiles took her earlobe in his mouth, whispering “okay” against her neck.

They stood up and Lydia took a condom before laying down on their bed, watching Stiles take his clothes off, mesmerized by his unusual poise. His movements were calm and collected when he settled next to her, kissing her leisurely while she was switching their position to straddle him.

She had the smile of an angel and Stiles let her willingly take his hands in hers to pin them down on each side of his head and kiss him, whispering “let me” in his ear and mirroring the same position that had scared her so many months ago.

After a few tries, she saw the moment when he managed to slip inside her reflect in his eyes and she felt it in her entire body. Her name died on his lips while he closed his eyes.

Soon, the atmosphere was filled with their names that they kept repeating like a litany, like countless inarticulated promises of eternal love. Lydia eventually freed Stiles’s hands, letting him place them on her hips to pull her closer, as if whatever they would do, there would always be too much distance between them. She straightened up above him leaning on his chest with her hands and tried in turn to commit to memory the melody of his groans and the music of her name pronounced by his swollen lips, following the rhythm their hips were setting like the most hallowed and sinful prayer.

When Stiles’s movement became more frantic and rough, his hands gripped harder at her hips to still her above him. She changed the angle by burying her head in the crook of his neck, making them both groan with pleasure. With Lydia leaning her head on her forearms either side of his head, Stiles was completely engulfed by her. Her body, her scent, her hair and her panting voice in his ear that kept whispering everything that came to her mind.

Lydia felt her entire body tense one more time and she buried her head deeper in the crook of his neck, tightening her embrace around his head with her fingers gripping tighter at his hair. She kept whispering nonsense to his ear, getting high on the pulse between her legs and the electricity his throaty groans were sending through her veins. His body jerked a few more times before relaxing underneath her own.

He kissed her cheek, her shoulder and it felt so pure she couldn’t resist the urge to kiss his lips lazily until their shallow breathing would even out. Stiles was tenderly stroking her sides with his knuckles but she could still feel his fingers gripping at her hips and secretly hoped that her skin would remember his touch to balance in an azure blue the red scars a monster had once left.

They eventually laid on their sides after Stiles had gotten up to dispose of the condom and they fell asleep in each other’s arms without realizing it and without having exchanged anything other than stares, kisses and smiles.

A cold draft woke Lydia up. Her heart beat faster for a second before she felt Stiles’s hand move from her waist to her hair, massaging her scalp to leisurely wake her up.

She opened her eyes, catching sight of the sky outside the window. The stars were less bright and the dark sky was slowly getting lighter. They must have slept a few hours. She turned slightly and her stare drifted to Stiles. He kissed her with a faint brush of his lips and whispered “Hi” in a smile against her forehead. She returned his smile, his kiss and got up, shivering when she only felt cold air around her.

Spotting a large blanket, she wrapped herself in it and gestured Stiles to follow her outside. The blanket was large enough for two and Stiles squeezed in beside Lydia, putting one of his arms around her waist and gripping the blanket tightly around them with the other.

They opened the door and got out, trying to walk without stepping on the blanket and laughing like two teenagers who would sneak out of their houses in the middle of the night for the first time.

Stiles’s steps were too big for Lydia and she had to make him slow his pace down by tightening her grip on his hip. They sat with their backs against a tree and watched the stars and the moon gradually disappear, letting the sun take over and relieve them from their hard task of lighting up their way back home to the lost souls at night.

When they were too cold and too tired, they went back inside and snuggled up in their bed, sleeping peacefully until late in the afternoon without shifting their body away from each other once.

They spent the rest of the day in some sort of haze. Both of them had their day off. They went outside to enjoy the sun. The flowers and trees were starting to bud as spring approached.

Laying on a blanket in the shade of a weeping willow near a river and barely clothed, they forgot to eat, they forgot how to talk. They smiled at each other, at the birds, the sun and the clouds, simply enjoying each other’s warmth.

Stiles would sometimes stroke Lydia’s soft and warm skin under one of his plaid shirts she had put on, sliding along her thigh to slowly reach her stomach and her breasts. They would quietly sigh in each other’s mouth while Lydia mirrored his actions until it would become too much and they would kiss long and deep.

She liked to tangle up her fingers in Stiles’s hair at the nape of his neck. It was making him look straight in her eyes. With each stroke, each kiss she would give him, the sun in his eyes kept growing, getting more luminous, lighting and warming her up.

It was hard to explain but the hold this darkness always had had over her seemed to recede. It wasn’t like those waves of warmth she was now used to feel when Stiles was near her, it was a more permanent sensation. As if the one on the other side of the darkness had finally stopped to draw energy from her, letting her do whatever she wanted with it.

The day went by way too quickly and reality came back on the next morning when they had to get up early and go to work.

After that, it took them almost an entire month to recover from their high and be able to look at the other without feeling the urge to ravish each other.

There were no words other than “urge” or “need” to describe what was going through their heads when their darkened eyes would meet or when their eager fingers would brush each other’s skin.

Lydia needed to feel Stiles enter her, to feel him pulse strong and hard inside of her. It was sometimes the only way for her to remember how real and present in her life he was. Stiles needed that too. He craved Lydia’s damp heat around him, wrapping him and allowing him to feel the beating of her heart through her blood vessels and her warm, swollen membranes. If he could, he would have entered her with his whole body to take refuge there, safe from the outside world with nothing else in his mind than trying to live in symbiosis with the only person that mattered now.

The tenderness and simplicity of their first time had been replaced by an endless cohort of groans and moans that had become as necessary and vital as oxygen. When they would end up biting each other in hectic kisses with wet eyes and rough gestures, they had the same feeling those who lost themselves in the desert must have.

Tired, thirsty and sun burnt when they would suddenly find water and, for the first time in ages, feel its coolness on their skin and down their throat. A salving coolness that came with a shooting pain made out of a thousand needles stinging them all at the same time.

They had lived their entire lives without having anything to look after and without forewarning, they found themselves with the most precious treasure they could ever wish for. It had to be protected, saved. The remaining journey could be long and they had so much to lose. Their way, their hopes, their mind. Each other.

They kissed with the despair of starvation. Each gesture leading them to sex was steered by three words they couldn’t escape. _Need. Want. More_.

As though they had waited too long and were afraid the other one would vanish into oblivion if they weren’t paying enough attention to the slightest details. The way Lydia was so lovingly looking at him when he was pulling at her hair with her head between his thighs or whenever she would let her body get completely and willingly controlled by his, whether he was pinning her down or making her look at them in the bathroom’s mirror as he was slipping inside of her while whispering nonsense against the nape of her neck in a whimpering voice. Stiles couldn’t describe the look she was giving him in those moments with any other words than _trust_ . She was trusting him with everything and it overwhelmed him. Lydia loved seeing him like that, rough and confident. _She_ was making him feel confident. This look in his eyes was just as much intoxicating as the one he had when he was relishing under her control.

They kept obsessively open delicate jars to save all those images, sounds, tastes and scents, too afraid that the next day, they would wake up to a hurricane that would erase everything. That somehow, what they thought was reality was a mirage caused by their inability to open up and their fear to let their feelings out.

The times their dread was at its highest coincided with their most unrestrained and wild embraces. They could spend days not being able to find a semblance of gentleness. During those days, it wasn’t unusual for them to end up crying in each other’s arms, clinging so tight to the other that it was impossible for them to know where their body ended and the other began. Why couldn’t they simply enjoy each other’s presence like normal people do? How could they make it work if they weren’t able to cope with the idea that they didn’t _have_ to feel empty anymore?

If they had known this compulsive storage would eventually even out to let them appreciate in peace the beauty of the countless pictures the other had painted across their bare bodies, the permanent imprint the other had left in their wake and that would forever be their evening star, they would have figured sooner that their behaviour wasn’t just about urgency.

It was about a hope.

A hope they used to think had been blighted by reality but had started to break through their griefs and layers of darkness: the hope of healing.

xxxxxx

Like any other storm, this one died down without warning, just the way it had appeared. Stiles opened his eyes one morning, his mouth feeling all fuzzy and his quiet mind still trapped in a sleepy haze. Something wasn’t right but he couldn’t tell what. After a little while, he realized that he wasn’t used to waking up with such a calm and that was what had surprised him. He felt strangely close to those 18th century sailors who had fought days long against a raging sea and only realized the sea gods’ fury had been appeased when they fell asleep without noticing.

He turned his head, expecting to find an empty space beside him (Lydia had tended to wake up with the lark lately) but was surprised to find her small feet crossed over her pillow. She was wrapped in their white sheet, letting him have the scratchy blanket, and was reading something while leaning on her elbows and chewing on a pen. Her feet were following an imaginary rhythm she was mouthing around the cap of the pen, making her look like the picture of innocence.

“Don’t you work this morning?”

Stiles had hesitated before asking the question. He didn’t want to disturb his contemplation of what he considered to be the actual painting of a Greek goddess. _Aphrodite reading with rosy cheeks_ he would have called it. His voice made her turn her head and a few strawberry blond locks stroked her naked shoulder. She smiled at him.

“No… And neither do you. I called sick for both of us earlier. We have food poisoning, poor us…”

“And they bought that?”

“Well, I used enough details to make it believable and to avoid any questions.”

“You’re a genius!”

She turned completely around, tightening the sheet around her and smiling knowingly at Stiles before squeezing in between his arms and neck. He kissed the top of her head and sighed.

“What were you reading?”

Lydia straightened up a little to look at him with a spark of enthusiasm in her eyes.

“That’s why I wanted a day off… I looked into your mother’s notebook and I think we can leave by the end of the month. Amsterdam could be a good start, she says it’s perfect in spring and we could go anywhere we want after that since it’s pretty central. What do you think?” Without waiting for an answer, she sat down to grab the notebook and the map that had been forgotten at their feet. “I say we use the entire day to plan everything. Not _everything_ everything but at least the most important. Like the countries, the cities, places we would like to see. I know we already talked about that at the beginning but it’s been months, maybe there are things you wanted to see that you didn’t think about before.” She spoke while scattering all the documents around them, forcing Stiles to sit up with a simple stare when she figured she needed more space on the bed. After a few minutes of explaining her own ideas, she turned toward him. “Well, aren’t you gonna say something? Tell me how you think we could organize our journey?”

Stiles failed to contain his grin, which only resulted in him getting kicked in the ribs. “I would but I’m just a mere mortal who uses blue just because it’s pretty and you find it _random_ , may I remind you!” He ducked to avoid a pillow and they both laughed.

“That’s true,” Lydia resumed after getting her breath back. “But you could tell me what you think about that. Do you want to? Go to Amsterdam by the end of the month I mean.”

“You mean stop getting kicked by cows and not having to wash away the smell of dung from my hair every day? Have you lost your mind, woman? That’s basically paradise!”

“It’s settled then!” She ignored the sarcasm and went back to her notes. “We leave by the end of the month!”

Stiles put his arm around her waist and lightly brushed his lips against her temple. “Absolutely.”

“I-” Lydia turned her head slightly and nibbled at her lips, like she was holding something back. Stiles felt his heart stop when he saw her cheeks flush red. “Well, you know…” She looked down, almost ashamed of the words that had almost escaped her lips and cleared her throat to regain some composure.

“Yeah, I know…” Stiles’s choked voice made her look up and stare at him. Who needed words when all she had to do was breathe and look in his eyes to be understood? If someone would take a picture of them right at that moment she knew how it would be titled. _Love on the tip of my tongue_ or something cheesy like that... To hell with cheesy, she loved him! Why would she be ashamed of that?

Stiles kissed her and there was no urgency in that kiss, it felt like a breath of fresh air. They found in their lazy kisses and languid strokes the door leading to the nest they had built somewhere in the space-time continuum and swore to never lose their way ever again. They stayed there a few hours. Having breakfast in bed, talking about ideas for their journey and finally, finally feeling _carefree_.

The universe had never been more beautiful than in the honey of Stiles’s eyes, in the emerald of Lydia’s. The universe had never smelled so good than in their body’s scent when they would lay cuddled up against each other, motionless and orgasm-tired. The entire universe was there. In their sighs. In their “good mornings”, their smirks. In his strokes. In his lasagnas. In her shampoo and the way she would untie her hair. In their toothbrushes next to each other in the bathroom.

Everywhere.

The universe was everywhere around them.

In them.

Like millions of galaxies that were still to be discovered.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For length reasons, I cut this chapter in two which means that I'll post next chapter next week! :) (but don't get used to that...)


	12. Of ghosts and silver lights

Two weeks before their departure, they were laying in bed after a long day at work. Lydia had a newspaper in hand and Stiles was attempting to read a book.

His fingers were absent-mindedly drawing shapes and words onto Lydia's thigh. She would shiver every now and then when his light touches would give her goosebumps, but she kept her concentration.

Stiles on the other hand was having a hard time focusing. In these quiet moments when they weren't ravishing each other, a hint of doubt would creep in. Maybe doubt wasn't the right word. It was like… there was something he was forgetting, something that he wanted to say or think, and it was right on the edge of his memory, he just couldn't quite place it.

Stiles sat the book down and leaned over to rest his chin on Lydia's shoulder.

"Can I help you?" she asked. He could hear the smile in her voice.

"What are you reading?"

"The newspaper," she replied coyly. He gave her thigh a slight pinch and Lydia let out a laugh. "It's this article about a guy who was in a coma for like 10 years, and he just woke up. Can you imagine that? Like one day you fall asleep, and when you wake up you've lost a decade of your life. You have to have new technology explained to you and learn about how crazy the world got while you were-" Lydia stopped talking as she glanced over at Stiles who seemed to be wearing a look of realization.

Realization because he finally remembered what had been eating at him. His mind had been occupied by so many emotions, his worries had temporarily vanished but they came rushing back in an instant. Lydia at the hospital, a werewolf and a mysterious man.

“What is it?”

He didn’t answer right away and tried to remember what Lydia had said about the man.

“What did that guy you met at the hospital tell you?”

His nervous tone made her tense as well. “Alan? Why?” she asked, frowning.

“Don’t you find it strangely convenient that you ran into someone who seemed to know exactly what happened to you?”

Lydia felt a shiver down her spine and a feeling of guilt overwhelmed her.

“So, you think I was wrong to trust him?” she asked in a low voice.

Stiles tilted his entire body to face her and cupped her jaw to make her look at him.

“No, no,” he tried to convey as much softness with his stare and voice as possible. “I trust you and you should trust your feelings. I’d just like to know who he was, you know.” Lydia seemed to relax a little so he let go of her face and leaned against the pillow, still looking at her. “According to what you said, I guess he was a druid. They are usually trustworthy but I’d like to make sure.”

Lydia scoffed, making Stiles raise an eyebrow, “A _what_ now?”

He smiled, wetting his bottom lip with his tongue. “Lydia, I’m so hurt right now.” He paused to dramatically put a hand on his heart and shake his head. “Don’t you listen to anything I tell you?”

“I’m usually distracted – “ she trailed off, kissing him faintly and making him snort. “Why don’t you jog my memory?”

“Well, druids usually guide a werewolf’s pack, they know a bunch of stuff about the supernatural and if they are Alan Deaton, they are way too cryptic giving you the information.” He laughed softly through his breath, losing himself in a memory before resuming. “Once, he left _me_ , a spastic and hyperactive 16 years old teenager alone with a handful of mountain ash that had to build a barrier to protect everyone inside it and to help me figure out how it worked, he only told me that I had to _believe_ strong enough that it was possible to make it happen.”

“And did it work?”

“Surprisingly, yeah.”

“Well, maybe you have magic powers…”

He heard her teasing tone and turned his head slowly to kiss her smirk away, smiling as well. Lydia had trouble containing her grin, trying to picture the scene, but Stiles eventually managed to coax her mouth open and she stopped her teasing.

He put his arm around her shoulder and Lydia nuzzled up in the crook of his shoulder when he felt her body twitch with a silent laugh.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name Alan so many times. Except in _Jumanji_ maybe.” They both laughed through their noses. “Must be a good druid’s name. I think it meant something like _rock_ or _noble_ in Celtic.”

Stiles laughed affectionately, “How would you possibly know that?”

“I don’t know,” she said shrugging and looking at him, smirking. “But it’s part of my charm, right?”

“Hell, yeah.” He kissed her temple and laid his head against it. “I suggest we find a third druid to test that hypothesis. Unless he was an African American about fifty and bald…”

Stiles had said it casually as a joke but Lydia froze, suddenly realizing something and slowly lifted her head.

“He _was_ an African American about fifty and bald.”

“What?” He turned his head so fast to look at her, Lydia was afraid he might have hurt himself.

After a long moment of silence that Stiles spent opening and closing his mouth and not knowing what to do with his hands, he eventually spoke with a hesitant voice.

“Do you think it might have been him?”

He saw her purse her lips and shrug, almost apologetically. “I have no idea, I’m sorry… He only told me his first name. Although, I _did_ have the feeling that he knew who I was. Or at least, that I reminded him of someone. And he did tell me he used to live in California.”

“So, he lives here now? I mean… the man you met lives here?”

Lydia shrugged, “I don’t know. He was American, I’m sure of that. Maybe he does live here or he was just visiting. Or maybe he’s helping young werewolf packs around the world…”

Seeing him smile at that last hypothesis but still frozen and drinking her words, she left them hanging, not knowing if telling him things that weren’t facts was actually a good idea. She still didn’t know if this man being Deaton was good news or not.

If she would have asked Stiles that question, he wouldn’t have been able to answer. At first, his blood had frozen in his veins at the thought that Lydia might have met someone from his past. Not anybody. Someone who knew his darkest and ugliest secrets, who had seen him at his murderous worst. It made him uncomfortable. As if two universes he knew would eventually collide had known about each other’s existence a little too early.

What was he supposed to feel?

Deep down, something was fidgeting. Waiting to explode in an unrestrained joy because the one who had tried his hardest to help him after his father’s death might be _here_ and he could have the chance to see him again after all those years.

But it wasn’t that simple and it was enough to dampen his enthusiasm.

Lydia resumed talking, slowly and carefully, after watching him sigh and lean against the headboard. She didn’t know the entire story but it was an easy guess to say that this man hadn’t just been a cryptic druid.

“You know, if the same thing that happened to me happened to the young girl I saw him with, there’s a strong possibility that they’re still at the hospital… In case you’d like to check…”

Nibbling at her lower lip and nervously tapping her folded legs, she watched him closely, looking for any reaction. He inhaled loudly and cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was hesitant and his stare was lost in the distance in front of him.

“No.” He shook his head, turning to look at her. “The last time I saw him was in front of a judge… He was trying to get my custody to help me getting emancipated but with my father being… gone, there was nobody to cover up for me anymore, I was involved in too many cases… I don’t know, I guess I was just an angry teenage boy, you know? We could have figured something out but I kind of lashed out on him in court. They sent me to a foster home and refused to give me any capacity to be emancipated before the legal age.”

A sad smile stretched on his lips when he felt Lydia’s hand rubbing his arm affectionately.

“He tried to visit me but I always pretended to be sick or asleep when he was there.” He shook his head again, closing his eyes and burying his head in his hands, leaning his elbows on his thighs.

Lydia remained silent, trying to figure out the best way to reply. She eventually took his hands in hers, forcing him to look at her.

“Look, I’m not saying you have to make a decision now, but think about it… If it really is him, I _know_ he’ll be happy to see you. But it’s your decision and whatever you decide, I’ll be there with you.” He nodded and his stare focused on the sheet’s folds between them. Lydia took his chin between her fingers, pulling him in her arms, rubbing his back with one hand and stroking his nape with the other. “After all, it wasn’t _such_ a bad idea to see me again, right?”

She felt him silently laugh and kiss the skin on her neck.

xxxxxx

 

Stiles hoped that the prospect of their departure would make him forget about it but it did the opposite.

Days went by.

The nearer D-Day drew, the tighter his chest became. He was suffocating under the same sense of impending doom he had felt in London when he had known Lydia was somewhere near him.

He _needed_ to know.

Seeing him so nervous was making Lydia edgy. She knew it was his decision but she was dying to convince him to simply have a look at the hospital.

In a way, Lydia did give him the push he needed.

Four days after their discussion, he came back at the end of the day and found her biting her nails while reading a book. He realized he had never seen her bite her nails. When he understood that _he_ was making her do that with his constant anxiety, he took the decision to go to the hospital at the first opportunity.

It came along on the next day.

The farmer needed someone to fetch parts he had ordered from a supplier in Krakow during lunch break. Stiles volunteered, thinking he would be able to make a detour via the hospital. The man lent him his car, an old blue Jeep that reminded him with a tightness in his chest of the one that had belonged to his mother and that he had given to Scott the day before his departure.

He settled behind the wheel and watched the farmer walk away before letting his memories flood his mind.

The interior wasn’t the same, nor was the scent. There wasn’t any ripped open packet of chips behind the passenger seat or wolfsbane in the glove compartment. There wasn’t any change of clothes in the trunk, even less old blood-stained t-shirts rolled up into a ball next to a first-aid kit on the back seat.

And obviously, there wasn’t any duct tape. The farmer surely knew how to properly fix his car.

A nostalgic smile stretched on Stiles’s lips when he grazed the wheel and the dashboard that seemed to vibrate with the intensity of the images dragging out of his memory in a succession of tears, laughter and colours.

He started the car and couldn’t help but smirk when he didn’t need to try again. When he lifted his head, he was almost expecting to see Scott burst in on him, opening the door and asking him to drive away fast.

But Scott wasn’t there.

Lydia was.

He saw her running in the distance, two sandwiches in her hand, her purse bouncing against her hip and her skirt flying around her legs.

Stiles let this vision engulf him. Lydia, running toward _him_ , all eyes on her and her eyes only staring at him, smiling.

When she was close enough to the Jeep, he leaned to open the door from the inside. She had to lay the sandwiches and her purse on the seat to lean on it and almost jump inside.

Once finally seated, she leaned on the headrest and closed her eyes, exhaling loudly. Her cheeks were still red and a soft laugh escaped Stiles’s lips which earned him an evil eye from Lydia.

“You didn’t have to run you know, I was gonna pick you up.”

“In that piece of junk? No, thank you…”

“How dare you?”

He pretended to look offended and stared at her with wide eyes but her smirk made him laugh. During the first minutes of the drive, he entertained the idea to tell her about his Jeep and his duct tape but he decided against it. He didn’t know how he would react, he wasn’t sure he would be able to talk about it as lightly as he should.

If Lydia noticed something, she was thoughtful enough not to mention it.

Instead, she turned the radio on, filling the car with Polish pop music and fifteen year-old hits.

After a while, she finally gave in to Stiles’s constant pleas and fed him bits of sandwiches that she put directly in his mouth, trying and failing to look pissed each time he would lick her fingers or nibble at them.

Thirty-four minutes later, they were at their destination. They quickly picked up what the farmer needed, putting it in the trunk and stayed a few minutes on a bench in a park to eat their lunch. Stiles had needed an excuse to postpone the moment he would rush to the hospital, to stay silent, trying to loosen the bundle of nerves in his stomach.

Guilt. It had always been guilt. Gnawing him, eating him up from the inside and he was sick of it. He couldn’t set his mind on something else than the last words he had said to Deaton. He had flown into a blind rage, repeating over and over again _This is all your fault_ , insulting him and almost spitting in his face. Deaton had closed his eyes and when he had opened them, they weren’t filled with anger or contempt. He was staring at him warmly, drying up the flood of insults pouring out of Stiles’s mouth. He had laid his fatherly hand on his forearm, staring at him straight in the eyes and telling him a genuine _I’m sorry_ with this heartfelt tone that had never left him.

Stiles had spent the rest of the day crying and had never seen him again.

Lydia’s small hand on his shoulder broke him out of his traumatic memories. Her thumb reached out to wipe a few tears from his cheek.

“C’mon, let’s go, you can’t go on like this.”

Her voice was barely a whisper against his temple but it was powerful enough to chase away his teenager’s snappy tone. She leaned to kiss his cheek and remained with her head against his shoulder until she felt him lean into her side.

They slowly went back to the Jeep and didn’t exchange a single word during the entire drive to the hospital. Lydia kept her hand on his thigh, massaging it from the tip of her thumb every time she felt him tense.

Once parked in front of the hospital, they stayed inside a little while to think about a plan. Lydia wasn’t sure she would be able to remember where the room was or its number. Even if she did remember, they couldn’t burst into a room without knowing who they would find in it. The Alan she had met could be another Alan and worst, the girl could have left.

After a few minutes, it was decided that Lydia would impersonate a specialist who would have been called by the young girl’s family doctor and would pretend she hadn’t heard from anyone in a while. She would have then decided to come and see for herself.

The front desk receptionist was a young woman who seemed a little stressed out. _Perfect_. It would make it easier given they didn’t even know the girl’s name.

Lydia walked in with Stiles beside her. She stuck out her jaw and put on her most haughty and stern mask. She stopped in front of the front desk woman and without asking her if she spoke English, she started to bombard her with questions. The woman was looking more anxious by the second.

Stiles was keeping his distance but when he realized that it was working and that the receptionist started to check on her computer, he came closer with his heart pounding in his ears.

“I’m sorry, Doctor Martin but she woke up almost a month ago. We kept her under observation for a little while but she went home a few days after.”

“Who visited her when she was here?” Stiles had stepped forward next to Lydia and his voice startled the woman who lifted her head to look at him, even more panicked.

“I’m sorry, I… I can’t give you this information.”

Lydia saw the way she nervously twisted her hands and knew it wouldn’t be difficult to make her give in. She replied in a scathing tone Stiles hoped he would never have to face.

“Just answer my assistant’s questions.” She sighed, looking exasperated and turned to face Stiles. “I told you, the reception in this structure is getting worse every year. I can’t believe _I_ am treated like _that_. You know – “ She shifted her stare toward the receptionist, “I won’t fail to talk about it to the director when I see him next week… Miss Laska.” She had said it with a devilish grin while glancing at her name tag.

The woman’s face turned even paler and without wasting another second, she checked her files.

Lydia felt Stiles coming closer to her. She threw him a thin smile and took his hand in hers, trying to soothe him while the receptionist wasn’t looking at them. When she raised her head from her computer, Lydia let go of his hand and her face shifted to an impatient look.

“She didn’t have a lot of visits…” She had to clear her throat to stop her voice from faltering. “Only her parents who took her home, Eliot Tobolski and Alan Deaton.”

She lifted her head without knowing that this last name she had said without pausing and in the same monotone had the power to trigger a storm. Stiles rubbed his hands on his face and stepped back, starting to walk aimlessly around the lobby. Lydia thanked the receptionist and apologized before meeting Stiles, grabbing his arm to lead them out.

He got inside the Jeep, sat behind the wheel and leaned his forehead against it. Lydia heaved herself up inside. She hesitated a few seconds but eventually laid her hand on his back, grazing it while saying his name in the softest voice possible.

Without lifting his head, he shifted his body to lay his head against her breasts, putting his arms around her waist. Lydia let him lean completely on her and wrapped him in her arms, burying her nose in his hair.

He silently cried a few minutes, trying to focus on Lydia’s strokes and the regular beating of her heart. When his tears began to dry, he slowly shifted to seat up. Lydia tried to catch his attention by cupping his wrist in her hand.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“What’s the point?” he asked, shrugging and drying the last tears on his cheeks with his sleeve. ”There’s nothing to say. It was Deaton and I missed him. I don’t even know if I’ll get the chance to see him again… We don’t even know where he lives. Maybe it’s for the best, he must already have enough problems.”

“Stiles, stop it please… First, you would have missed him anyway, they must have left a few days after I saw them… And as for him having enough problems, I’m sure the day you’ll come back, you’ll realize – “

“No!” He interrupted her abruptly and immediately regretted it. He shook his head, closed his eyes and resumed in a soft voice. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk to you like that, none of this is your fault. It’s just that… I know what you’re gonna say. That when I’ll go back, they’ll forgive me. But I can’t go back, I don’t want to. I don’t want them to _have_ to forgive me. I want them to forget me, to have a life. Scott, his mom, Deaton… They have better things to do than forgive me.”

Lydia inhaled and closed her eyes.

“You’re wrong.” She was talking so slowly and softly, Stiles felt like she was building a frail bubble around them that could burst with the slightest movement. She opened her eyes and continued. “You’re wrong and I’m gonna prove it to you. I don’t know how yet but I will. I don’t care if it takes me weeks or months or years but I’ll prove you wrong.” Stiles opened his mouth to reply something but she shut him up with a smile and a kiss. “And don’t try to change my mind because I won’t, okay?… Do you trust me?”

The look on her face was so earnest and loving it almost made Stiles cry again. He kissed her a little deeper before answering “Yes, I do. Of course, I do.”

 

* * *

 

 

 _It had been months since the last time he had dared to go_ outside _. He felt weak for no reason, shuddered at the sight of any shadow. Images and names were coming back to him but he couldn’t tell what they were. Memories? Dreams? How could he find out? For the first time in years, he was realizing just how alone he was. He had nobody to ask. Even if he had someone, how would he have asked. He wasn’t sure if he could still talk._

_One thing was sure. He was human, he knew it by now because he had seen a stray dog and could tell the difference. But he wasn’t always human. Sometimes, he was something else. He worshipped those moments: he felt better in those moments, more powerful. Sadly, they were rare now and seemed to coincide with the nights when the Moon was at its brightest. He couldn’t remember a time when he had been a slave to the Moon or to anything for that mattered and it was filling him with a towering rage._

_The attack came from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. He felt his heart pound so hard it was almost like it wanted to free itself from his chest. Something lacerated his face, making his lips bleed and something else grazed his chest and his back, skinning him. Invisible claws were tracing lines on his legs, from his calves to his thighs, cutting through the flesh and muscles. It almost happened all at once, making him feel everything to the deepest of his core and soul. The pain was so sharp and engulfed him entirely, making it impossible to scream or defend himself. He tried to run away, to forget about the ache. He was running without knowing where to go, looking for this maze’s exit while trying to get rid of this thing he couldn’t even see. He was running with the strength desperation would give you, reaching impasses, running down stairs, jumping over walls._

_There was a light in the distance which he tried to follow but every time he came closer, it would move away. He eventually realized that instead of running toward the exit, he was going deeper in the maze of those narrow streets._

_Out of breath, he had to stop and found himself face to face with a creature he had never seen. He would have been incapable to describe it. It seemed to come from the depths of the Earth, the depths of Hell or Heaven. He looked at it, starry-eyed but with an undeniable terror._

_He fell on his knees before it, diverting his eyes from its deep stare and looked down, catching sight of rats and cockroaches running away._

_In the distance, a wolf howled._

_He lifted his head once again to look at it. There was a certain beauty in its brown eyes, a mesmerizing beauty in its dark hair floating behind it._

_It came closer to him and he was paralysed. It touched him and suddenly, he wasn’t in pain anymore. He wasn’t feeling_ anything _. There was an emptiness inside of him, nothing made sense anymore. All he could feel was a force pushing him toward the edge of a precipice and leaving him with nothing positive to hold on._

_He was empty. There was nothing else but the impenetrable ebony darkness standing in front of him._

_The creature bent over him, burying its hands in his entrails, emptying him from everything he still owned and throwing it in the gutter. Rats came back._

_It bent a bow back, aiming straight at his heart. He opened his eyes wide, more frightened than ever and still completely frozen. It lasted less than a second. The arrow hit his heart and everything came back to his memory. His name, his identity and flashes of voices and colours._

_He saw the girl who had allowed him to live again. The girl with fire in her hair and stormy ocean in her eyes. She had helped him breathe again and seemed far, far away from him now, on the other side of a screen of smoke that seemed to thicken by the second. He tried to call her, to reach her, catch her attention but she seemed to react less and less to his pleas. Wild panic was settling inside of him, as if his life was depending on this last microsecond. She had to turn her head, see him… But the screen of smoke closed itself and he caught sight one last time of her bright hair before understanding that it was over._

_His stare shifted to the creature still standing in front of him and who had drawn another arrow. He saw a faint smirk on it lips, showing dimples around its smile. A silver medallion with a howling wolf around its neck caught his attention and made him open his eyes even wider when he recognized it. When he recognized_ her _. The last sound that came out of his mouth was a barely human laugh and was interrupted by an arrow lodged in his throat._

_The arrow flew so fast it drew a single silver line that lit up the darkness._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, don't hate me!!!! I promise I don't take pleasure in Stiles's misery, stay with me!  
> Thanks for the lovely comments I received those last days, it really helps me and means a lot <3  
> Next chapter is in progress :)


	13. Weltgefühl

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no logic for chapters lenght and I'm sorry...
> 
> One important thing for that chapter and the three to come: there's a flash-forward for the present (we left them in April and now, it's January) so, you'll learn everything that happened between with flashbacks. Each scene starts with the date and place so you don't lose yourself in the chronology.
> 
> If you're confused or have questions, please ask!
> 
> I hope it will makes you want to travel ;)

**Tuesday, April 26th** **2022 – Poland, countryside around Krakow**

 

“You’re sure you have enough?”

Lydia kept translating what the farmer’s wife was saying (even though she knew Stiles’s Polish had improved) and smiled warmly at their host. She had insisted on being there when they left. “Yes, Ciocia, thanks again. I think you gave us enough food for at least five days!” She answered while Stiles was looking into the two coolers she had just given them.

Mrs. Poraszka turned her attention on him and his big smile made her chuckle. “You’re going to need a lot of food for a twelve hours drive! I don’t want you to starve…”

She smiled, her motherly gaze lingering on both of them. Stiles still hadn’t lifted his head and Lydia knew very well why. He was holding back a few tears. Mrs. Poraszka had been an incredible support for them and for Stiles especially since they had come back from the hospital two weeks ago. She always had had a soft spot for those two young Americans coming out of nowhere, who were a little lost in their lives but who were obviously deeply in love with each other. From the beginning, she had tried to make everything easier for them. She had a daughter about their age who was living in Ukraine and she couldn’t help projecting her protective instinct on them. They knew they had been included in the family when she had told them they could stop using her first name (Lada) and call her _Ciocia_ , the equivalent to _auntie_.

“Well, Ciocia,” Stiles lifted his head and held out his hand. “We can’t thank you enough for everything you and your husband did for us. It’s been six exhausting but extraordinary months.”

Lada shook her head with a knowing look and opened her arms to wrap Stiles in a warm and loving embrace. “Come on, _synku_ ” Stiles wanted to say something but he knew he would have ended up crying if he had let it all out so he tightened his embrace. There wasn’t a more universal way to express his gratitude.

She then turned to hug Lydia as tightly and whispered in her ear “Take care of him, he needs you.”

Lydia let out a soft laugh, “I will”, she murmured with a catch in her voice before letting go.

Lada watched them load their luggage into their rental car and discreetly wiped her wet eyes. Her husband joined her and shook their hands, wishing them a safe journey.

The four of them looked at each other in silent for a few seconds, not knowing how to express the emotions rushing inside of them. Lydia and Stiles felt like they were leaving the closest thing to a _home_ , a place where they had felt safe enough to let their love bloom while the farmers hoped the world wouldn’t crush this couple who seemed to be the definition of soulmates.

Stiles gave Lydia a bottle of water before opening the passenger door for her and waved at the farmers with a watery smile. “Thanks again for everything,” he said while sitting behind the wheel. Lydia opened her window, “We won’t forget to send you postcards!”

Lada nodded and turned to her husband who smiled warmly behind his grey and bushy moustache. He took his wife by the waist and waved at them as Stiles started the engine. They watched the car drive away, Stiles and Lydia’s hands waving through the opened windows for a little while.

Still holding his wife, the farmer kissed her temple and uttered the words they both had in their minds “Those two… They are pretty good together.”

“Yes,” she replied in a low voice. “I hope someone is watching over them. Do you think we left that kind of impression when we were their age?”

Her husband chuckled. “I don’t know but I hope we were better liars… _Food poisoning_?”

They both shook their heads, laughing softly. The car disappeared on the horizon and they went back inside their house.

 

* * *

 

 **Friday, January 6** **th** **2023, 2 AM – Keflavik airport, Island**

 

For the fifth time in two minutes, Stiles glanced at his watch. Time was going by very slowly. Too slowly. They had landed an hour ago and would have to wait another five until their next flight. An hour that had felt like an entire day… How would he survive that? It was torture. This never-ending wait was gradually bringing his hyperactive self to the surface and that was dangerous because Lydia was currently asleep and snoring on his shoulder, her lips slightly parted. He was trying to remain as still as possible to let her sleep but his right leg kept nervously jolting without his consent. Every time it happened, his stare shifted to Lydia to make sure he hadn’t woken her up but she was sound asleep. His lips stretched in a lopsided smile when he spotted a little droplet of saliva dripping from the corner of her mouth to his plaid shirt. This simple vision was enough to ease his nerves.

He should have been used to it by now but seeing Lydia so peaceful and laid-back was still taking him aback. It was still a mesmerizing vision. She mumbled something that sounded like his name and it hit him again: that difference between the Lydia who was here with him and the one he had found in the cemetery. Thinking about it made him dizzy, it felt like an eternity ago… A little more than a year. It wasn’t _that_ long but between the cemetery and this terminal, they had looked for Peter, they had worked in a farm and had travelled through Europe.

Stiles laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. He was excited but couldn’t help feeling a little nervous about what was awaiting them.

Lydia stirred against his shoulder and slowly woke up. She sat up and yawned while rubbing her fingers against her eyes. Stiles opened his own eyes to watch her adorable sleepy gaze shift toward him.

“Good morning, beautiful.”

She smiled at him before nuzzling her head against the comfort of his shoulder once again.

“How long did I sleep?”

“Exactly twenty three minutes and – “ he glanced at his watch once again, “twenty four seconds, forteen if we take away the time it took you to wake up and ask the question.”

Lydia chuckled, “someone has been nervously glancing at his watch, hasn’t he?”

“Maybe…” he answered while kissing the top of her head.

A buzzing in his pocket made Lydia straighten up. Stiles took his phone in his hand and froze. He looked hesitantly at her.

“You should answer…”

He didn’t answer, still looking at his phone with wide eyes. She resumed, “Stiles, you already talked to him on the phone five days ago…”

“It was the day after New Year’s Eve… I was tired, hungover and maybe _a little_ emotional….” He heard Lydia scoff and added, “okay, maybe _a little_ is a euphemism…”

Stiles nibbled at his lips, hopelessly watching his phone buzz in his hands until it stopped and the screen would switch off. He exhaled and closed his eyes while Lydia affectionately rubbed his back. “I’ll call him back later…” he said underneath his breath.

“Okay,” she kissed his cheek lightly, her elbow resting on his shoulder. “Give me the notebook, I want to look at it.”

She knew better than try to rush him into this, there was no way he would do something that made him this anxious in his current state. The change of topic seemed to ease Stiles’s nerves. He went through his backpack and got their notebook out. They had started it in Poland, right after their visit to the hospital, looking for Deaton. It had been a way for Lydia to take Stiles’s mind off of everything and help him focus on something else while planning their journey.

Now, there were pages and pages covered in his or her handwriting, commenting every step of their journey with photos and drawings. Lydia’s drawings obviously, because Stiles’s were a disaster. They had followed Claudia’s tips, checking everything on the list she had made at the end of her notebook.

Lydia leaned against Stiles’s side and leafed through it. She still couldn’t believe in her luck, in this happiness that had decided it was alright to settle inside of her.

 

* * *

 

 

 **Friday, September 2** **nd** **2022 – Innsbrück, Austria  
**

 

They had spent August basking in the sun and had decided to head somewhere cooler. Claudia mentioned a small town in Austria, near the Alps, where she often spent her vacations when she was a kid. Her aunt had an apartment in Innsbrück not so far away and a small cabin higher in the pasture.

In her notebook, there was a picture of Claudia in front of this cabin. She must have been 10 years old but time and scotch tape she had used had rubbed out details. Claudia and her aunt (who had an arm wrapped around her shoulders) were smiling to the camera. If Stiles hadn’t told her what it was, Lydia would have never guessed that what Claudia was holding in her small arms was a lamb. The sky had turned white, merging with the clouds and the snow on the mountains in the background. It gave to the picture a celestial dimension. The cabin was behind them, surrounded by small yellow flowers. The only colour that hadn’t faded.

Stiles had told Lydia that when he was a kid, he had begged his parents to let him adopt a lamb after his mother had showed him this picture. It had lasted months and had only stopped when he had found a new passion for boas.

Lydia was glad she hadn’t let Stiles and his eagerness plan their hike. If she had listened to him, they would have jumped from the bus that had driven them from Croatia to Austria directly to the village where they would have started climbing. But Lydia knew it would be a disaster and wanted to climb higher than the cabin until they would reach the nearest peak. It wasn’t the highest of the chain but it was still more than two kilometres and even if neither of them were in bad shape, they weren’t fit enough to do that after almost five hours in a crowded and cheap bus.

They visited countless sportswear stores to find the right equipment and spent three weeks training their hiking skills. The contrast between the air by the sea and here in the mountain was striking. The wind always left salt on their lips and sand on their damp skin by the sea, washing them from everything until they would feel each other’s soul dancing under their bones. Here, the wind made their lungs expand until there wasn’t any empty space, until each cell would be filled with this biting air.

The first time they went hiking, they didn’t last more than 45 minutes, but when they came back to the room they were renting, their cheeks were flushed red and they were able to feel muscles they had actually forgotten. Stiles complained a lot this first night, giving Lydia the opportunity to tease him until they went to bed. But the truth was that their minds were blissfully empty for the first time since what had happened in Moldova barely two months ago. Their bodies were so sore it was enough to push any worry away.

Lydia was relishing in the vision of a Stiles who looked so grumpy for plain, boring reasons and not haunted by his tragic past. He must have noticed something himself because despite his incessant grumbling, he was awake before Lydia every morning.

As draining as it was, they kept hiking everyday a little longer, allowing themselves a break once in a while to sleep in and cuddle in the warmth of their bed.

After their three weeks of training, they were able to hike hours long without feeling breathless and actually enjoy it. They decided to have their big hike two days later and set off during the first hours of the day when the colours in the sky were still pale and the streets empty.

The cabin seemed to have been abandoned years ago, but the weather was too beautiful to make Stiles regret anything. Orange and purple flowers had grown together with the yellow ones. There was a patch of grass in front of the terrace that his mother’s aunt had always tried to mow regularly to give the children space to play soccer while the adults would enjoy a cup of coffee. It was now a paradise for butterflies and grasshoppers. They tried to take a picture of themselves in front of the cabin but Stiles kept moving at the worst moment and Lydia almost lost her patience.

They stayed there a little while to rest, eat a cereal bar, some dried fruits and drink water before beginning to climb higher.

On their way up, Lydia would look back once in a while to see the city grow smaller and smaller. Breathing was getting harder and trees had been replaced with grass. She was watching Stiles who tried his best to stay by her side. He was taller than her and for one of his strides, she had to make two. But it didn’t stop him from following her rhythm, helping her with a steady hand on her lower back from time to time.

Her lungs were burning from the lack of air but she had never breathed so well than when they reached the top. They sat on a rock, Stiles wrapped his arm around her shoulder and she let herself melt against his side. Patches of vegetation were scattered here and there and an absolute silence was surrounding them. The only sound in their ears was the wind and an occasional eagle.

It suddenly struck Lydia how wrong she could have been when she had imagined having reached a peak the day she had received the Field’s Medal because she literally was at a mountain peak and she had never felt so alive and surrounded by life. There was no trace of the crushing loneliness and emptiness she used to feel.

Even if they couldn’t see it at first, there was life. Underneath them, in the eroding rocks. There was life above them, in the clouds passing by, forming above lakes to travel as far as possible. Down below, in each house they could still make out. In front of them, in the pasture where shepherds took their sheep and cows.

And there was life in them, in each cell that carried the oxygen that made their heart beat.

 _Weltgefühl_.

She had learnt that word in her German class in high school and she was just now grasping its meaning. The feeling of the world. The feeling that everything existed for a reason, that everything was connected in the great scheme of the universe. Even her.

She could feel this connection through the oxygen she was inhaling and exhaling.

Through Stiles’s fingers intertwined with hers.

She would have wanted to go back in time to find the version of herself wandering in the streets in Granada, looking for some control and tell her that it didn’t matter. That all she had to do was jump in.

It _was_ that simple.

 

* * *

 

 **Friday, January 6** **th** **2023, 5.30 AM – Keflavik airport, Island**

 

Stiles came back toward Lydia, two plastic cups filled with coffee in his hands.

“So, bad news: I don’t know why there are so many people in this airport at 5 fucking AM but the line was too long at those Starbucks vending machine so, I went to a regular one and that coffee is probably disgusting… I mean, the last drops made a weird _sploosh_ sound…” He bent down to give Lydia her coffee, trying to be as careful as he could while she reached out, stifling a yawn. “But the good news is that we’ll have plenty of time to get better ones and even have breakfast because our plane has a two hour delay…”

“Two hours? Why?” she sighed with a pout Stiles found adorable.

Lydia was still tired. He could tell just by looking at her red eyes that she must have rubbed a few times to stay awake. Stiles tried to contain his smile at the mental picture of an exhausted Lydia in one of his too-big hoodies, her little hands half covered with the sleeves, yawning and waiting for him to come back.

She took the cup in both her hands. She winced a little, “God Stiles, it’s boiling hot!”

“Sorry…” he smiled apologetically. “But it’s not that hot, you’re just cold.”

She shrugged and blew on the coffee to warm herself up. Closing her eyes, she let out a long sigh of content.

“Well,” she said looking at Stiles now sitting beside her, “I did need something warm… I’ll get us actual coffee later, it will loosen my legs up.” She stopped to smile at him. “I’ll bring you a snack if the restaurants aren’t open.”

“Peanut butter cups?” Stiles asked, grinning and nodding several times with wide eyes, turning Lydia’s yawn into a laugh.

“Yeah, if you want.”

They had found a perfect spot to sit and drowse. Despite the security waking them up around 3AM to check their tickets and passports, they were able to sleep for almost two hours. But they had made the mistake to go to the bathroom a little after that at the same time and had lost their seats. It took them a good half-hour to find a comfortable spot in the airport after that. Since then, if they wanted something, one of them always stayed behind to keep their seats. Lydia seemed to have accepted the situation but it was driving Stiles crazy and he kept looking for excuses to stand up.

But it wasn’t the only thing making him nervous and given the way Lydia would regularly glance sideways at him, he figured she knew that. He read for probably the tenth time the advertising display in front of them, hoping it would take his mind off everything. Heaving a long sigh, he drank his coffee in one gulp and burnt his throat with the thick and bitter liquid. He winced and coughed, feeling his eyes pricking with tears until Lydia’s warm hand came resting above his.

“Stop worrying, it will be alright, I promise.”

Stiles shrugged, coughing behind his hand. “I’m not sure…”

He turned his hand around to take Lydia’s hand in his and intertwined their fingers. When his eyes landed on her, she was carefully having a sip from her coffee before wetting her lips with the tip of her tongue and blowing on the liquid again. Maybe it was his nervous brain talking but Stiles could swear it was the cutest thing he had ever seen and his heart swelled with love when he realized how very Lydia-like it was. She turned to look at him with a smile playing at the corner of her lips. “You know what? If you don’t trust yourself, at least trust me. That coffee _is_ boiling hot…”

“Oh, I hadn’t noticed, thanks…” He had replied with a smirk and a hint of sarcasm but it had a hollow ring, even to his ears. He knew Lydia was trying to distract him and he would have wanted to thank her with more than half-hearted banter. But he couldn’t.

His gaze wandered among the few people around them who were slowly waking up or tossing and turning in their sleep. He wondered if any of them could guess what was happening, if any of them realized that among them, someone was about to do the only thing that had been terrifying him for years: coming back to the wolf’s den and pray nothing bad would happen. Maybe he wasn’t the only one.

Lydia’s voice broke him out of his thoughts, instantly easing the beating of his heart. “Stiles? Come here…”

He let Lydia pull him against her, his arms circling her waist and letting her hands wrap his head to press it gently against her chest. She had set the cup on the floor beside her feet. Her hands against his cheek and neck were still hot from the contact with the thin plastic. He closed his eyes, focusing on her voice that she had lowered to the minimum to whisper “Breathe with me” against his ear, her nose buried in his hair.

The slow and even rhythm of her chest rising then falling against his head was lulling him. There was a warmth radiating from her body, from her entire being that engulfed him. Waves of serenity started to surge inside of him. They stayed like that a few minutes, Lydia tenderly rocking Stiles and stroking his hair until the waves had swept everything away, leaving the shore pristine and new. Soon, his lungs managed to expand and he took a breath of fresh air that eased his entire body.

Lydia must have felt it because she softly called his name, stroking his cheek with her thumb. His eyes opened and he straightened up, staring at her with a look of adoration.

“Thanks”, the words came out as a barely audible whisper before he brushed his lips against hers. “I don’t know what I would do without you.”

“You’d burn yourself even more with your coffee”, she faintly laughed, making Stiles smile and actually kiss her.

In a fluid movement, she took her plastic cup back and adjusted herself on her seat. “I’d give anything for an armchair with thick cushions…” She winced, the metal seat hurting her back.

“You’ve been sitting here for a while, go for a walk, I’ll keep your stuff.”

Her gaze focused on Stiles’s eyes and she must have found some remnants of his anxiety because she shook her head. “No, I’ll get us some snacks and actual coffees in about half an hour. Go and get yourself water, your tongue must be still burning.”

“Get _us_ some snacks?”

His smirk made Lydia smile “Yes, _us_. Now go before you start another earthquake with your leg.”

“Alright!!”

He stood up, smiling and walked a few feet away before coming back toward Lydia, mumbling something that sounded like “forgot something”. He bent over her and crushed his lips on hers, his hands deep buried in her curls. With a laughing gasp, she kissed him back.

“Did you text – “ Lydia didn’t have the time to finish her question and was cut off by his mouth kissing hers slower.

“Yeah I told him we would be late…”

Right at that moment, his phone buzzed and Stiles beamed, looking at the answer he just received.

“Is that him?”

“Yeah, he says he can’t wait.”

Stiles had the most adorable smile on his face. Lydia thought she had rarely seen him looking so young and somewhat innocent. “See?” She nudged his knee with her own, diverting his gaze from his phone to her. “I told you he’d be happy.”

He bent down to kiss her one more time before going away, typing something on his phone.

 

* * *

 

 **Sunday, May 15** **th** **2022 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands**

 

After leaving the farm at the end of April, they had decided to spend a few weeks in the Dutch countryside before getting to the capital in May. Claudia had written about Amsterdam that from March to May was the best time of the year to be there because the temperature was starting to get nice and the tulips were in full blossom, which turned the city and its park into something magical.

And it really was magical.

On a sunny day, they decided to blend into the crowd and rent bikes to follow the canals and wander all day long through the streets. Lydia didn’t struggle long to get used to the many rules of the road but Stiles – who already was a very mediocre pedestrian and didn’t understand why people wouldn’t cross an empty street only because the light was red… _And it wasn’t a big street, three strides at most!_ – turned out to be a terrible cyclist. He got honked at by countless bikes, cars and motorbikes. A grandma even hit him on the head with her stick when he stayed too long on the wrong side of a cycle way shared with pedestrians.

But he managed to stay in a good mood because for the first time in years, he could actually feel his mother’s presence around him. This city looked like her, felt like her. He could easily imagine her riding her bike and wandering aimlessly through the streets, stopping on a bridge to take a picture of a barge covered in flowers and peacefully passing on. It was an open city, open to the world and to everything humanity had to offer, mixing its best with its worst sides.

And in the middle of the canals, idyllic streets and areas where day and night would merge, was the gouda museum.

“Lydia! You wanted to go to a museum, right?” Stiles had stopped abruptly and Lydia almost crashed into him.

“Yeah, why?”

“Look! A museum!”

Since Stiles had found a leaflet about that museum, he had done everything to _accidentally_ come across it and now had the cheerful expression of a six year-old on Christmas Eve.

Lydia followed his stare and chuckled. “Stiles, it’s a _cheese_ museum!”

“Yeah, but it’s still a museum, right?”

She tried to bite back her laugh at his toothy grin. “You know we’re in Amsterdam, right? Van Gogh, Rembrandt…”

“But _cheese_! You like cheese, right?”

“I guess…”

“And it’s a museum!”

“Yeah, but – “

She had to stop talking because Stiles had leaned his bike against the canal fence and was coming closer to her with a smirk on his lips, using his husky and teasing voice.

“Lydia, come on… Picture it. Hundreds of goudas… Not only yellow ones but also blue, red and green arranged in plates and cut into cubes with individuals toothpicks… Don’t you wanna know what green gouda tastes like?”

“I’m guessing basil or pesto – “ She had said it as casually as possible to tease him a little but wasn’t prepared to _freeze_ him. He gaped at her and eventually blinked to collect his wits.

“Lydiaaaaaaaa”, he whined. “I’m trying to be sexy!”

She nibbled at her lips, trying not to laugh. “You’re trying to be sexy…”

“Yes!”

“With cheese?”

“Yes!”

“Well then, please continue!” She leaned back on the fence, crossed her arms and smiled, waiting expectantly.

“No, the moment’s gone…” he started to walk away dejectedly and Lydia knew she was going to fall right into his trap but couldn’t find it in herself to care.

She sighed and rolled her eyes for good measure before calling after him. “Okay you win, let’s go.”

He turned around in an instant, looking all excited. “You won’t regret it! We’re gonna have such a _gouda_ time…”

Lydia tried hard to remain as serious as possible but after a few seconds spent staring at his goofy smile, she couldn’t help bursting into laughter. “Okay,” she said after regaining her composure. “I don’t know how long exactly you’ve been preparing that one but that was the only and last cheese joke I’ll allow you…”

“Come on, you can’t _brie_ serious!”

Lydia was taking her bike back and didn’t turn around. “I’m very serious, cheese puns aren’t funny,” she said smiling.

“You’re just laughtose intolerant…” She heard him get on his bike and let her laugh escape her lips.

“And you’re just cheesy! Now,” she said turning her head to look at him. “Can you please lead the way?”

Stiles was staring at her like she had just declared her love to him. “Lydia, that was brie-lliant…”

She didn’t answer this time and tried to look as aggravated as she could.

“Okay I’ll lead the way!” He ended up saying with a knowing smirk. “Don’t underestimate cheese seduction, ever again…”

Without giving her time to reply something, he winked at her and sped off toward the building, dodging at the last second a young couple who insulted him. At least, that was what he understood from their shouting and angry faces. Lydia shook her head with a fond smile and followed him, apologizing for him to them.

They spent a little more than an hour in the museum, Lydia actually having fun with the free tasting games. But their incessant cheese jokes battle was the real highlight of the tour.

On the next day, (and because reciprocating was the key to a healthy relationship), Stiles agreed to go to the Van Gogh Museum and even found himself enjoying it. He didn't realize he'd recognize so much of Van Gogh's work.

Although, there was one particular piece that caught his attention. It showed crows flying above a wheat field. He knew this painting because his mother had a replica above her desk. When he was a kid, it used to scare him. The colours were dark, the night was falling and he could feel the icy wind rustling the wheat or hear the crows croaking. Sometimes, when he wanted to prove to himself that he was a big boy, he stood on purpose in front of the painting right before bedtime but he always ended up crying and calling his mother in the middle of the night. When she died and he understood that crows were a symbol for death, it became too hard to look at it so he asked his father to take it away.

But today, years after, he noticed something he had never seen. Maybe because his mother’s replica was small or because he had always focused on the details like he always did. It wasn’t just the night, the rustled wheat and crows. Right in the middle of the field, taking half of the painting, were three paths. Paths starting in the foreground and losing themselves in the distance. Those paths opened the space, allowing you to choose an alternative to death and night. If you would look at it from another angle, you could see three paths meeting in one central point, right in the foreground centre. Stiles remembered something Lydia had told him one night about what the Asians called the fifth cardinal point. A symbol for the centre, representing balance and stability. The breath after a long anxiety episode.

It had always been there, staring at him.

Stiles was still overwhelmed when they got out of the museum and as soon as they were back in the studio they were renting, he immersed himself in his mother’s writings under Lydia’s proud and knowing gaze.

During this first month, Stiles felt like he was slowly getting back his young self, the little boy attached to his family. He discovered that his roots weren’t dug up like he had always thought they were but were still buried, deep and safe under the ground.

 

* * *

 

 **Friday, January 6** **th** **2023, 8.10 AM – Keflavik airport, Island**

 

Lydia was sipping the hazelnut cappuccino she had bought after their breakfast while Stiles had fallen asleep on her shoulder. She gazed at his peaceful expression for a moment. The bags she had always seen under his eyes seemed to have finally left his face. He had changed, looked younger. Maybe someone had decided to give them back all those years they had lost, after all.

Her stare drifted to the people around them. In front of them, was a woman with her two kids and her husband. They looked tired of waiting but the woman took both kids on her lap and gave a peck on her husband’s cheek with such tenderness it made Lydia smile. The man had bought colouring books for the kids who were starting to get bored.

Getting married or having children had never been a dream for Lydia, she had always imagined her life without any of it. Truth was, she herself never had a family. She didn’t have any memory of tenderness between her parents and her father had left so suddenly, she only could associate the word _family_ with problems and disappointments. But even _she_ had to admit that this family seemed happy.

She felt warmth spreading through her chest and sighed while leaning her cheek against Stiles’s soft hair. By now, she knew how to let this warmth swallow her to heal her wounds and somehow reach Stiles. Her constant efforts since July had paid off, she now knew how to canalize her “strengths” or the “waves” that were overwhelming her from time to time. She still didn’t know _what_ she was but she knew what she could do. She could help Stiles. The memory of that one night in Prague came to her mind, it was the first time this connection between them had been so tangible and from that moment she had tried to figure out a way to use it and well… here they were!

She glanced at Stiles’s watch. Still fifty minutes and they’ll take off…

Half awake, he took her hand in his without opening his eyes and began to draw circles on the back of it. She kissed the top of his head and closed her eyes, feeling light-hearted and loved.

 

* * *

 

 **Tuesday, June 7** **th** **2022 – Prague, Czech Republic**

 

“Ballet?” Stiles was looking at her all starry-eyed and mouth agape, making Lydia blush. “Is there something you’re not good at?”

She shrugged and smirked. “Probably not…”

Stiles snorted and shook his head before gazing at her again, realizing something. “That’s why you were doing so good when we had ice skating classes in the 5th grade!”

“You remember that?” she asked chuckling.

Stiles felt warmth spread on his cheeks and diverted his eyes to focus on the landscape unfolding through their empty compartment’s window. “Barely…” He tried to hold back his smile but finally cave in when Lydia pressed her shoulder against his with a knowing _mmh_. He turned his head to smile at her and kiss her forehead. “Of course, I remember. You were spinning around with your hair and your dress flying all around you… I watched you spin faster and faster and I was sure you were going to fly away. I can’t remember where that was but they had taken us to that outdoor ice rink, you know? The one near the forest?” Lydia nodded and he resumed. “It must have been in early November because there were a few dead leaves the colour of your hair on the ice and all I was thinking about was that it would be beautiful if your speed could make the leaves fly around you and make a crown above your head like a wood nymph…” He seemed to lose himself in the memory until Lydia let out a laugh that made him come back to reality. “Don’t laugh at me, I was really into nymphs around that age… And would you rather have me wish for your dress to fly higher until I could see your panties like Logan did?”

She shook her head, smiling and kissed him softly “No… I like my sappy poet better.” She was about to lean back on her seat but Stiles cupped her cheek to bring her closer and kiss her again. Lydia sighed against his lips and resumed, “I have an idea. We’re gonna go to an ice rink during the week and if I manage to make you look at me with the face you just had, we’re going to the national theatre to see a ballet.”

She grinned widely, she was dying to see a ballet in Prague but she couldn’t find the argument that would convince him. She knew she had found it when he leaned his head back and sighed loudly.

“Don’t take advantage of me like that! That’s cheating, you know I’ll lose…”

“It’s a no, then?” She pouted her lips, looking disappointed and slid closer to Stiles who tried to bite back his smile. “Maybe I won’t wear any panties and I won’t even mind if that’s the only thing you can think about…” She ran her fingers along his thigh and brushed her nose against his earlobe.

Letting out a soft moan, Stiles turned his head to kiss her deeply, letting her tongue do whatever it wanted with his.

“You’re the devil, Lydia Martin… I agree but I’m warning you,” he left his sentence hanging to kiss the corner of her lips, “I’m hard to please.”

Before she could make a sarcastic comment, the compartment’s door opened and an old woman walked in, sitting in front of them. Stiles chewed the inside of his cheek to regain his composure and Lydia discreetly hid her smile behind her hand.

They spent the short hour left to Prague talking quietly, Lydia telling him about her four years of ballet in elementary school while Stiles played absently with her fingers, a fond smile on his lips.

They finally arrived and their first impression was that there were more tourists than what they had expected. Nevertheless, it was the most beautiful city Lydia had ever seen. Looking at Stiles’s dumbfounded face when they got lost on their way to the hotel, she thought he was probably thinking the same. Never had she felt the weight of the centuries as much as on those paved streets that seemed to come right out of the 16th century. Everything around them strengthened that feeling: the tarnished bronze statues, the ochre or red buildings, the slate roofs and the smell of hot cinnamon invading their senses whenever they would pass a bakery.

But their first night reminded Lydia that Prague wasn’t frozen in the 16th century and that its narrow and tortuous streets were perfect for the number of drunken tourists and students.

The next morning, when Stiles would wake up Lydia by pushing her in his sleep, she would realize that not only did she have an atrocious headache, but she was also tightly hugging a hideous stuffed lion and three bottles filled with something pink were resting on their unpacked suitcases (probably a girly alcohol Stiles had been drinking all night long). Lydia would sigh, push Stiles’s arm to avoid the humiliation of actually falling from the bed and would swear to never let him win again so easily.

Because it _was_ his fault. Of course, it was.

xxxxxx

 

When they had finally found their hotel, it was already 8 PM and Lydia was exhausted. She only craved one thing: order some take out and eat in their hotel room, preferably leaning against Stiles’s torso with his knees as arm-rests.

But maybe Lydia had already pushed her luck too far with the ice rink because she let Stiles convince her to eat in a medieval restaurant that had jugglers, fire-eaters, fake dancing Gypsies and dressed up waiters.

It was clearly a tourist trap but the food was decent and Stiles had enough energy to make the conversation for two so, Lydia couldn’t complain, really. His jokes made her genuinely laugh and the face he made every time he lost track of his thoughts was adorable. She couldn’t help smiling and wanting to kiss him.

At one point during the night, a waiter brought out a cake with candles for a guest that was  celebrating his birthday. Stiles stared at Lydia with an almost panicked look “I completely forgot your birthday!”

“It’s in March, don’t worry,” she said laughing.

“I know it’s in March but I forgot to buy something for you! Why didn’t you remind me? Oh God… I have to buy you something! But then it won’t be a birthday present…”

He kept rambling on under Lydia’s amused stare and eventually decided that he couldn’t buy something in a souvenir shop, he wanted something meaningful. That was why it baffled Lydia when he entered a darts tournament in the bar next to the restaurant to win a “surprise gift”.

“It’s not the gift that matters, it’s the story behind it,” he tried to explain when he saw her raising her eyebrow. “Whatever I offer you, it will be something I won in a tournament… Like a… Like a knight!”

Lydia pursed her lips and nodded, “A _knight_ , really? I didn’t know _dart_ knights were a thing…”

Stiles opened his eyes widely at that, “Oh my god, yes! Yes! I love it, I’m your dart knight – “ As those words escaped his mouth, he opened his eyes wide. “Like Dark Knight!! I could be your Batman!” He paused to smile seductively at her and brushed his thumb against her blushing cheek. “And I’m gonna choose to ignore your sarcasm because it’s gonna be fun and you’ll love it, come on!”

She chuckled and followed him inside.

After paying his entry fee, Stiles was given a number and was taken to the back of the room where six boards had been set up. The rules were simple: they were twelve players paired up and playing against each other. One was eliminated each game.

Lydia sat on a stool close enough to Stiles to be able to wish him luck when it was his turn. She felt like a groupie, giggling each time he would send her a wink.

The players quickly all agreed that the losers had to pay a drink of their choice to all the winners. Stiles survived the first round before being eliminated and was sure he would have passed out if his strawberry-blonde goddess hadn’t helped him with the six drinks he had been offered.

Stiles and Lydia started to talk with a group of Americans waiting for their friends who still were in the tournament. Lydia knew Stiles had never really been a sociable person in high school and suspected that it wasn’t the life he’d had after high school that could have helped him perfect his social skills. She, herself, had never been at the top of the social ladder after high school but she knew how this kind of situation worked and was gladly helping Stiles by playing dumb (not all the time obviously, it wasn’t high school anymore but she realized she didn’t mind at all making him shine using her old tricks). As she would tell Stiles later, the secret was always to show off something the others could lust after. She would fall in love with him a little more after that because he would look at her horrified and tell her that nothing and nobody was worth making a _thing_ out of her.

Lydia kept taking sips out of Stiles’s beer and enjoyed more and more how carefree it made her feel. His constant stare and warm hand on the small of her back were helping, truth be told. Alcohol was delightfully going to her head and before she could understand what was happening, they were all gulping down a fourth rhubarb schnapps shot. Stiles was happy, she could read it in his eyes that seemed to reflect an internal light. It was making everything else worth it: her tiredness, the mask she had to wear (because she still didn’t know any other way to interact with people that weren’t Stiles) and the men who were shamelessly checking her out from across the room.

At the end of the tournament, Stiles ended up with a consolation prize: a stuffed lion wearing a suit with a nightmarish smile. Stiles gave it to Lydia with a silly smile and sang “happy birthday”, followed by all the others drunkenly singing in the background. He kissed her and promised to do better the next time.

She didn’t have time to reply and tell him how happy she already was because their fellow-countrymen were asking them if they wanted to go on a pub crawl. Lydia discreetly rolled her eyes at the proposition because she couldn’t believe how cliché they were being but Stiles was looking at her with so much enthusiasm it was endearing and made her realize it would probably be a first time for him so she eventually agreed. She secured the lion in her purse and watched powerless as one of the guys took _her_ Stiles away from her with a pat on his back to talk sports (or something as boring) with him, leaving her alone her with the girls. Catching her eyes behind his shoulders, he smiled apologetically at her and mouthed _thank you_. She smiled, shaking her head to make him understand it was okay.

Minutes after, her phone buzzed with a text from him.

_We’re leaving whenever you want, just let me know, okay?_

She replied a short _Okay but don’t worry about me!_ before going back to her conversation.

Soon, she had to face the fact that she may have been wrong about them because she was enjoying their company. One of the girls, Zoe, was especially interesting. She had gone to MIT and after talking about Lydia’s research, they talked about their travel through Europe and Lydia felt so comfortable around her she forgot all about the reasons she didn’t want to join them in the first place.

They spent almost the entire night together, talking and laughing loudly in bars until Stiles caught sight of the daggers Lydia was throwing with her eyes at one of the girls. _Violet, was it?_ He took Lydia’s little hand in his under the table, asking her discreetly if she wanted to go. She nodded and kissed him slowly, making a show out of her tongue coaxing his mouth open and her hand running along his thigh under Violet’s ( _Victoria’s?_ ) incredulous stare. When she leaned back, Stiles winked at her. “Interesting tactic…” he whispered in her ear, making her blush.

She stood up, saying her goodbyes to everyone, smiling warmly at Zoe and looking at Victoria ( _no, Vivian, definitely Vivian…_ ) disdainfully. That skank had spent the last hour ogling Stiles like he was the last boiled egg at a Sunday family brunch and Lydia couldn’t take it anymore. He was _her_ egg and only hers.

She laughed at her drunken thought and when Stiles asked her what was so funny on their way out, she told him while leaning on him and smiling widely, “You’re _my_ egg.”

“Yes, I am”, he replied snorting before kissing her. “What does that make you, then?”

It took a few seconds for Lydia to come up with something. “It makes me…” She nibbled at her lips, chuckling and leaning on Stiles for balance “your egg…cup?”

Stiles laughed and kissed her temple “Oh my god, babe, you’re so drunk!”

“I thought I vetoed _babe_ … And I’m not drunk, I’m just tipsy…” She started to walk away from him but had to stop after two steps because she couldn’t contain her giggles and it was making it difficult to walk straight.

Feeling a hand around her wrist, she turned around to catch sight of Stiles grabbing his phone in his pocket with a mischievous smile. “Wait a second...”

“What are you – “ It suddenly occurred to her that he was trying to take a picture of her, which only made her laugh even more. “No, Stiles!” She tried to hide her face behind her hands but let out a squeal when she felt Stiles’s big hand grab both her hands and take the picture he would later refer as _Drunken and jealous nymph bathed in the moonlight in Prague, part one._

They kept walking more or less straight because Lydia kept trying to hide her face from Stiles who wasn’t done with his insistence on documenting the future generations about what a drunken nymph looked like.

“What’s that sound?” Stiles suddenly asked. He stopped abruptly, making Lydia almost bump into him. She hung to his forearm to regain some balance and strained her ear.

“A guitarist I guess, why?”

A spark lit up his eyes. “Because I want to dance with you, come on!”

“Stiles, no, not this way… I wanna go to bed!” Her words were swallowed by her laughter. She was trying to pull Stiles toward their hotel and he kept trying to follow the sound of the musician.

“No, Lydia, listen! He has to be around that corner. _And darling, darliiiiiiiiing, stand -_ ” He was clearly out of tune but Lydia couldn’t resist his husky voice and turned around to face him, brushing her nose against his. He kept quiet a few seconds before resuming in a lower voice. “ _Stand by me…_ Besides, it would be an insult to the nymphs’ goddess to not make you dance tonight.”

“And why is that?”

He stepped even closer and gave her a quick peck on the lips. “Because you look _so_ good. And I insist on the _so_.”

She bit her lips, trying to temper the warmth spreading fast through her body but when he firmly grabbed her ass to press her against him, she couldn’t help a moan to escape her mouth a little too loudly. She kissed him eagerly. He tasted sweet, like the rhubarb schnapps he had spent the entire night drinking (swearing he would never drink anything else) and was making those cute noises she loved so much while teasingly massaging her.

They eventually leaned back and smiled at each other, laughing lightly in the atmosphere. They started stumbling again toward the voice, Stiles singing kept getting louder, more and more out of tune and making Lydia giggle until it became hard to breathe.

When they reached the guitarist, a dozen people were already there, dancing, drinking and laughing. Stiles held out his hand, looking at Lydia almost shyly but smirking like the tease he was “So, now, get your cute little ass over here and dance with me.”

She lifted an eyebrow and took his hand “I’m not the only one with interesting tactics I see…”

He scoffed and she took his hand with a sly smile. She let the music, the distant sound of other’s happiness and the beating of Stiles’s heart against her ear carry her away. Closing their eyes, they swayed in silence for a while.

Maybe it was this sudden stillness and tenderness mixed with the effects of the alcohol but time seemed to stop and she felt a force hurtling her backwards. Slowly, then faster and faster everything rewound before her eyes. She felt dizzy, caught in a swirl, but something was firmly holding her and helping her to stand on her feet.

She saw his face everywhere, in all her memories flashing across her closed eyelids. He was there, behind her in biology, standing across the hallway and trying to fit too many things in his locker, three tables away from her in the cafeteria, sitting in a beat-up car, daydreaming in class, smiling to his friends, laughing, getting detentions and seeming far too worried for his young age.

It all faded away in a big explosion that prevented her from focusing on any light, sound or sensation. The only thing holding her straight and keeping her conscious was the firm warmth on the small of her back.

She eventually came back to reality, feeling like she had just experienced a different version of her nightmares only… more pleasant. The song had changed, some John Lennon hippy-phase song that made her oddly feel connected to the elements around her.

Opening her eyes and lifting her head, she saw Stiles staring at her with his eyes wide opened. “What just happened?” he asked breathless.

“You felt it too?” Their voices were only whispers and it suddenly felt like the most intimate situation they had ever been in.

“Yeah, it was… warm and… cosy?”

“Yeah, warm and cosy...”

“What was it?”

Lydia wet her lips from the tip of her tongue, his warm breath tingling her in the best way possible. She eventually shrugged and leaned against his shoulder. “I don’t know.”

They started dancing again. He took her in his arms, spinning her around a few times and humming the lyrics.

“Stiles?” she said chuckling.

He stopped abruptly and lost himself in her gaze, finding balance again by leaning his forehead against hers. She resumed with a laugh in her voice. “It makes sense that you felt it too you know… I always thought we have this kind of connection… Unspoken, of course.”

Lydia bit her lips and Stiles snorted, recognizing his own words from a decade ago. “I knew you heard that! You’re just evil…”

“I saved you from a crushing humiliation and that’s how you thank me?”

“Yeah, I guess you did…”

He would have wanted to tease her a little more but alcohol was seriously befogging his mind and softening his muscles. They eventually stopped swaying to kiss leisurely. Lydia tightened her grasp on Stiles’s hips and tried to slide her thumbs under his shirt. She felt him laugh into her mouth and they soon had to lean back to breathe.

Tiredness started to weigh heavier on their eyelids so they decided to go back to their hotel, leaning on each other. They stopped on their way to buy some rhubarb schnapps bottles at a small corner store run by an old man with a weird moustache and who was half asleep on his cash register.

The walk to their hotel was long enough for the effects of the alcohol to wear off a little. The second they walked into their room, they crashed on the bed without even turning the light on and leaned against the headboard to talk a little more with a drawl and tired voices, the moonlight underlining their figures. Lydia closed her eyes and nuzzled against Stiles’s shoulder, breathing him in deeply and closing the distance between her nose and his neck. She felt him move against her and opened her eyes to see him rifle through her purse.

“What are you doing?” She wanted to straighten up and grab his sleeve but barely had the strength to wave her arm toward him. He took the stuffed lion out and pecked Lydia’s cheeks with it, making a kissing noise before nuzzling it in her neck to hug her. She giggled and took the lion from him to look at it.

“That’s the best gift someone won for you, right?” He asked, leaning against her shoulder.

“Sure, better than a trip to _Rome_ …”

Stiles straightened up to look at her with wide eyes. Snorting, she kissed the corner of his mouth.

“I’m kidding… The only thing someone won for me was a stuffed kitten.” Her gaze returned to the hideous lion. “Why did they make it wear a suit?”

After a few seconds of silence, Lydia turned her head to make sure Stiles hadn’t fallen asleep on her shoulder but he was wide awake, trying to bite back a laugh, his face redder than ever.

She rolled her eyes, her lips starting to stretch in a smile without her noticing. “Go ahead, say it…”

“To make him look more… _stuffy_?” His voice faltered under the laugh he still tried to hold back which made him look silly and shouldn’t be that attractive… “Do you know what you should call it?” Stiles bit his lips and Lydia opened her eyes wide. She knew exactly where he was heading and she couldn’t give him the satisfaction to laugh because she had already laughed too many times at his jokes for a night. She sighed and closed her eyes, trying to control the nervous giggle that threatened to burst out of her.

“Stiles, I’m warning you. If you say what I think you’re going to say, I’m taking a separate room for the rest of the week.”

For a moment, Lydia managed to keep a straight face which made Stiles’s smile drop. It wrung Lydia’s heart and she couldn’t stop her next words to come out of her mouth, rolling her eyes for good measure. “Okay, make your joke…”

It wasn’t just a smile that appeared on Stiles’s face, it was a toothy grin that went from his left ear to his right one. “McStuffy Junior.”

“It’s a lame joke, you know that, right?” But it sounded like a lie because her smile was as bright as Stiles’s who was wiping away tears from laughter with his sleeve.

“Come on, you’re laughing, I’m hilarious… And handsome. You can’t resist me.” He was grinning like a loon and leaned closer to her ear, lowering his voice. “I’m your _egg_ , remember?”

His words shouldn’t have any effect on Lydia and yet, she felt the need to slide her knees under his legs to come closer to him.

“You know, maybe I’ll take another room.”

“Come on,” he lowered his voice a little more and played absently with the hem of her skirt. “You wouldn’t last ten minutes…”

“Wanna bet?” She smirked and started to get up, using her remaining willpower that hadn’t melted in a puddle somewhere between them. But the effort was worth it because the panic she read in his stare was priceless.

“No, wait, please! I – I can’t sleep without you, you know that…” Lydia was glad they were both still a little drunk because otherwise, he would have certainly let her go to win the bet and it could have lasted days.

She turned on her heels with a satisfied grin and kneeled on the bed “Tell me if I’m wrong but it looks like _you’re_ the one who wouldn’t last ten minutes…”

She laid next to him and took the lion in her hands again without paying attention to the love-struck look he was throwing her. “You know what? I’m gonna call it McSappy…”

It was Stiles’s turn to roll his eyes and snort, “Oh, really? McSappy? Because I’m sappy? You’re just as funny as I am, Martin…”

She shrugged and nibbled at her bottom lip. “That way, I’ll think about you when I see it.”

“And _I’m_ the sappy one?” His tone was sarcastic but his stare was nothing but love and awe.

Lydia melted all over again.

“Shut up…” She smiled and closed the few inches that separated their lips before nuzzling her nose against his neck “What can I say, you’re rubbing off on me.”

xxxxxx

 

When everything would come back to her on the next morning, she would tighten her grip on the stuffed lion and sneak under Stiles’s arm to cuddle up against his warm torso before falling back asleep.

Two days after, when Lydia would take him to the ice rink, he would look at her spin, jump and land perfectly with that smile that would render him speechless and unable to do nothing else but gawk at her.

But what could he say? Lydia was amazing and losing this bet was part of the things that were just fated to happen.


	14. Nemesis

**Friday, January 6** **th** **2023, 8.40 AM – Keflavik airport, Island**

Stiles felt something giving his thigh a hard squeeze and he jolted awake, straightening his head abruptly. It took a few seconds for his brain to grasp that it was Lydia’s hand on his thigh and her voice repeating his name. A glance at her wide-eyed stare was enough to fully wake him up. “Wh… What’s happening? Did I sleep the entire day?”

Lydia opened her mouth without turning her head but not a single word came out. Stiles checked his watch, they still had twenty minutes before boarding the plane. He followed her pointed finger and nothing caught his eyes except maybe a couple fighting in the middle of the bustling airport.

His attention was brought back to Lydia when she let out a curse. Her eyes seemed to scan the crowd and she clapped her tongue against her palate. She slowly rose up, craning her neck and gesturing Stiles to follow her. “Come…”

Still feeling drowsy, Stiles was watching her without understanding. He called her but she didn’t answer and began to walk away. This _déjà vu_ made his heart beat stronger against his ribcage and he couldn’t help picturing the worst. He hurried after her, remembering to grab his backpack and Lydia’s small suitcase at the last second. Calling her name louder, a wave of relief swamped him as she turned and gestured him to come closer.

When he caught up with her, Lydia leaned against his arm and pointed toward one of the boarding gates. “Do you think that’s…”

Stiles frowned, trying to find what was agitating her. Sounding impatient, Lydia added: “The man in red at the end of the line!”

Right on cue, the man turned around. Lydia gasped and beside her, Stiles hazily felt like all his muscles had suddenly weakened. He dropped both his jaw and the luggage he held at arm’s length at the same time. Despite the commotion around them, the sudden noise reverberated through the entire terminal and drew everyone’s attention on them. Stiles felt his heart hammer in his chest when he realized that the man was looking for the cause of the noise. He wished he could hide somewhere but the loud and regular sound of his own heart was hypnotizing him. When their stares met, Stiles felt his breath catch.

He could tell his legs were making him move forward but they seemed to belong to someone else. As they made him run into a businessman who was yelling on the phone, Stiles got a grip on himself. He was about to go back to Lydia to help her with her suitcase that had fallen open when he heard the man’s voice calling his name.

The man was looking at him incredulously but his stare was tinged with an infinite affection that pierced right through Stiles’s heart. He closed his eyes and shoved his hands in his pockets to discreetly count his fingers against his thighs. It was a dream, it _had_ to be a dream.

And yet, when he heard his name repeated in that same deep voice, he knew it could only belong to Alan Deaton.

He opened his eyes and he couldn’t stop a few tears blurring his vision. Drying his eyes with his sleeve, he felt Deaton’s arms wrapping him in a warm embrace. Before he could put words on what was happening, his scent brought him back a decade ago. Unable to control his sobs any longer, he broke down crying in his comforting arms. Stiles clung on to his jacket, buried his nose in it and closed his eyes even harder, trying to soothe the teenager he had been with that almost unreal embrace. It brought back all the frustrations he had felt during the last twelve years, the anger, the sadness and the remorse. They all seemed to pour through him with the force of a bubbling torrent, turning his sobs into the tears a newborn would shed as twilight would close in. Then, bit by bit, the flow calmed down. The torrent became a river and narrowed down to a stream, leaving only fossils on the shore behind to bare witness to his old demons. Stiles felt his heartbeat slow down and only when he collected his wits, did he notice that Deaton was slowly loosening his grip on him.

He wiped his nose and eyes, causing a smile to stretch on Deaton’s lips. Stiles saw there was only a dozen passengers left in the queue and suddenly feared watching him leave without having said anything. But his mind was dreadfully empty and he found nothing to say, noticing that the attendant was gesturing the last passengers to move forward. Silence didn’t seem to bother Deaton who was looking at Stiles with something in his stare that the younger man couldn’t decipher. Whatever it was, it eventually gave Stiles enough serenity to help him articulate a sentence that he found ridiculous the moment it left his mouth, “I came to see you at the hospital, but I was too late...”

Deaton’s lips quivered and his eyes moved to Lydia who was discreetly approaching next to Stiles before focusing back on him with an amused smile. “I should have known you wouldn’t be too far away from her,” he said in the exact same voice Stiles remembered.

He felt Lydia’s small hand tightening around his bicep, her thumb drawing comforting circles in his muscle while she took his fingers in her free hand and nestled them in the warmth of her palm. If it wasn’t for the pressure Lydia was applying against his limbs to ground him, he would have sworn he had left his body. He felt numb, as if all the emotions that had just been through him had drained him, leaving behind them an empty shell.

Since that day at the hospital, Stiles had pictured hundreds of reunions with Deaton. He had pictured every possibility, none involving him not being able to make the slightest move.

And yet, that silent conversation felt more meaningful than any conversation they could have had.

But the spell they were under broke the second the flight attendant put her hand on Deaton’s shoulder to ask him if he was standing in line to board.

“Yes, I’ll be right there, thanks,” he answered before turning back to look at Stiles. That was it. Stiles felt a wave of anxiety rise inside of him, almost stopping him from breathing. Lydia must have felt it because she clung closer to him. He could feel the warmth of her thigh against his hand still resting securely in hers.

“I have to go, but I’ll see you soon.” With that, Deaton took Stiles in his arms, forcing Lydia to let go of his arm and hand. Stiles cursed himself for still being unable to get the smallest sound out of his mouth. He almost hadn’t noticed that Deaton was now talking to Lydia whose fingers had found their ways back in his hand.

Among the snippets of their quick conversation that pierced through his befogged mind, he heard Deaton ask Lydia if she had killed her monster.

“Yeah, a few months ago…” She answered in a choked voice that made Stiles want to hold her closer against him.

Stiles was unable to focus on what they were saying, it all seemed to happen too fast.

Deaton turned his eyes on Stiles, took him one more time in his arms and picked up his suitcase. As he began to walk backwards toward the gate, he smiled warmly at him, “Take care, Stiles.”

Maybe this last sentence tasted too much like a definitive goodbye or maybe it was Lydia nudging him forward that made him react. Stiles caught his arm to hold him back and shrieked “I’m sorry!”

As soon as those words left his mouth, he felt like they were coming directly from his heart: a strained scream, articulated with difficulty as if it had desiccated after all those years waiting for the opportunity to escape his ribcage.

But once finally out, Stiles couldn’t stop those words to keep coming out, savouring on his lips their redeeming taste. “I’m sorry, Alan, I’m sorry… Please, forgive me…” It was the only thing he could articulate. Lydia had let go of his hand, he could hear her breathe behind him, not too far away.

There was an edge to his voice that even Stiles could hear, increasing his own anxiety. Deaton laid his hand on Stiles’s forearm. He could feel the warmth even through the three layers of clothes he was wearing.

“Stiles, there’s nothing to forgive.”

The flight attendant came back, allowing Stiles to wake up a little more and ask, “Where are you going?”

“I’m flying back to California. Call Scott, he’ll tell you everything.”

On those words, Deaton squeezed his arm, smiled to Lydia and followed the flight attendant. Stiles watched him hand his ticket and passport over. He was racking his brain to find something smart to say, something meaningful but he ended up whispering “thank you”.

Had Deaton heard him when he turned around? His deep brown eyes stared right at him, an enigmatic look plastered on his face. “I’m glad you’re home, son.”

Then, he gave him one last smile and disappeared behind the door.

Stiles remained groggy a few seconds, unable to tear his eyes off of the glass door that only re-opened to let out a security officer. He felt Lydia’s small fingers trying to find their way in his clenched fist, making him loosen his grip to take her hand in his own. She brought their two hands to her lips and kissed each of his fingers with closed eyes. Stiles cupped the back of her head with his free hand to draw her closer to him and plant a kiss on her forehead. Her hair felt so soft in his hand that he closed his eyes and massaged her skull, letting her deep breath engulf him. He was starting to feel better when he felt her lips on his eyelid and as he opened his eyes, he cursed himself for being the cause of what he saw in her beautiful green irises. She didn’t have to say anything to make him understand she was desperate. Desperate for not being able to help him more, for not being able to do something else than hold his hand to support him.

He had heard her talk about her “monster”, the one they had found in Moldova and could see how much it still affected her. At this moment, he feared that even with the passing of time, her eyes would always carry the icy glimmer Peter Hale had left there. If werewolves carried their dead in the colour of their eyes, it was easy to imagine that any murderer would be left with something tinging his soul forever. It was making him sick. Lydia didn’t deserve such fate.

But Stiles had sworn to her that he would never let any dead soul take her away from the world of the living so, he did the only thing he could think of. He crashed his lips against hers, sighing her name and making a throaty noise that could have sounded obscene if it hadn’t been filled with so much adoration. Lydia kissed him back with as much eagerness, making the silent promise to never let him lose his balance.

They stayed like this a long moment. Lydia was pulling him closer to her with her hands in his hair and Stiles responded by tightening his grip on her waist, not hurting her but firmly enough that there wouldn’t be any empty space between their bodies.

Out of breath, Stiles eventually buried his nose in Lydia’s hair, putting his arms around her neck and shivering at the feeling of her hands grazing their way up to his shoulder blades under his jacket. Her lips were on his neck, planting wet and gentle kisses on his skin. If he could, he would let himself disappear into her.

“I’m so proud of you,” she whispered in the crook of his neck and it suddenly dawned on Stiles what exactly had happened. He was about to answer something when their names were called, startling them and reminding them about their plane. They slowly untangled. Without any other word, Lydia brushed Stiles’s cheek from her fingertip and erased his last tears. “Come on,” she said smiling with quivering lips.

She turned around, grabbed her suitcase and waited for Stiles to do the same before walking toward their boarding gate. It was hard to not steal glances at him. There was something about him, about the smile he had, about his walk that mesmerized her. When she realized she had never seen him like that, she thought that maybe, killing the monster wasn’t her most beautiful victory.

He lifted his head, meeting her loving gaze and she felt herself flush but didn’t look away. She smiled at him, unable to take her eyes off of that new intensity in the amber of his eyes and she could have sworn that as he laughed under his breath, she felt a heavy shade withdrawing from his body to merge into his sigh and disappear without a sound.

 

* * *

 

**July 2022 – Moldova**

When they landed at the Chisinau airport in Moldova, Stiles and Lydia gave each other a few apprehensive glances. Everything was closed and soldiers were crowding the place. It felt like entering a deserted and forbidden area. Something must have happened. They were so uncomfortable that they hurried to take the train that would lead them to the countryside in a small house they had rented.

There were pages and pages in Claudia’s notebook about the region’s history, culture and legends. Thanks to her Moldovan best friend when she was a teenager, she knew all the countries in this area. She had been in Ukraine, Romania and Moldova for weekends or during her first years as a college student more times than she could count. According to what she had written in her notebook, she loved the region’s folklore and legends about vampires and werewolves. Stiles still remembered (not without some irony) the number of stories she had told him when he was a kid that then filled his nights and games.

He had easily convinced Lydia to come to Moldova with a conversation that had begun with something he had said that had taken Lydia aback: “What if we find a werewolf museum! We could take pictures for Scott and make fun of his hairy cousins when we go back!”.  Lydia had tried to cover her smiles to avoid arousing his suspicion because he had kept talking without realizing the words that had left his mouth.

From an outsider perspective, it wasn’t probably much but she knew it was a little revolution and she couldn’t help feeling proud of him and feeling she had something to do with it. But Stiles had spent so many times observing her that she had realized it was impossible for her to hide anything from him. Eventually, he had asked her what was making her smile and she had told him it was the first time she heard him speak about Scott or about the idea to come back with such a light tone. Stiles had frozen for a moment, giving himself time to soak up his words. “When we go back…” as if a part of himself had already accepted the idea of going back and everything it implied without the other part noticing.

They hadn’t given it more thoughts and had bought tickets to Moldova, without actually knowing what they would find.

After a few days spent hiking and visiting museums, they were asked to go to the nearest city to fix some administrative issues related to their visas.

It was a small town with an unpronounceable name situated (depending on who they asked) in Moldova, Romania or Ukraine. The chaos that must have followed the fall of the USSR was still affecting the region, the result being that the entire town and its surrounding area seemed to exist everywhere and nowhere at the same time. As if time and age didn’t have any leverage there.

Everything was grey: the streets, the buildings and even the sky. The city-centre was the only part of the town standing out. It was a maze of small streets, colourful buildings and half-timbered houses, a real tourist attraction in the middle of nowhere.

That day, the city was in a ferment. Music bands had formed at every corner, causing gatherings everywhere while other people were parading, singing and dancing. Despite the town’s greyish tone, people were the picture of happiness.

Once Stiles and Lydia had went through their administrative formalities, they mingled with the crowd. People would hug or embrace them but they couldn’t get what was celebrated. Eventually, as they were in a middle of a conversation, a man stumbled on Stiles’s feet and asked them who they were in a decent English considering how drunk he was.

“You’re tourists here? Now is a good time… People are no longer afraid to go downtown, people don’t disappear anymore!”

“Disappear?”

“What were people afraid of?”

They had spoken at the same time, making the man laugh. He grabbed their shoulders to bring them closer to him and whisper to their ears. Lydia forced herself to not wrinkle her nose at his breath heavy with alcohol.

“For years, people had been disappearing. They went downtown and _poof_! They just disappeared! But it’s not the case anymore… It’s been six months… Nobody knows why or how…” The man tightened his grip and resumed, trying to sound more mysterious. “But there are some people who swear they saw a monster downtown… Some say it was a werewolf…” He stepped back and burst out laughing when he saw their panic-stricken stares. “Or it could just be the mayor trying to increase tourism with some mystery, who knows… I don’t believe in those disappearances or in werewolves. It’s only good to make kids go to bed early if you want my opinion…. Anyway, enjoy the festivities!”

The man was swallowed by the crowd before Stiles could ask him more questions. He turned to look at Lydia and the same shadow went through their eyes. Was it true? Could it be Peter? It had been months since Stiles had stopped communicating with the woman they met in Spain, he had no idea if one of her leads would have led them to Moldova.

They didn’t dare talk about it, it all seemed so far away and unfamiliar now, almost irrelevant. Deep buried in their thoughts, they walked away from the crowd with absolutely no idea where they were heading.

After a little while, Stiles noticed that Lydia had quickened her step. He tried to call her but she didn’t react, he tried to catch up with her and face her but she got around him with an empty stare.

Without faltering, Lydia kept heading downtown, seeming to follow an itinerary she knew by heart, only increasing Stiles’s agitation. She finally stopped a few feet before him and stared at something on the wall to her right. Stiles had to wait until he was next to her to notice the entrance to a small back street that widened after the first houses.

When she vanished into the darkness of the alley without any hesitation, Stiles gasped and tried to call her once again but he was met with her silence. Muttering between his teeth, he quickly followed her before losing sight of her. He lifted his head and barely made out the sky: the roofs must have started collapsing toward each other years ago. After a little while, he even had troubles making out what was in right front of him and kept tripping over rocks.

“Lydia? You _know_ I would follow you anywhere but I’m pretty sure this is the entrance to hell and I’m not ready for that…”

His voice trembled a little with anxiety but Lydia didn’t slow down, as if she hadn’t even heard him. Stiles stayed behind her, on the lookout for anything suspicious and regularly checking behind him or above them. But he knew it was pointless. Even if something happened, they didn’t have anything to protect themselves and couldn’t hide anywhere. They were trapped.

Nothing in that alley gave him confidence and the fact that Lydia hadn’t been answering for a while made matters worse. She kept going ahead, her back straight, her head up and with a confident step.

Tripping over something flabby, Stiles lowered his eyes and saw rats and cockroaches hugging the wall. He didn’t know if they were leading them somewhere or just following them and wasn’t sure which would be worse. He gulped when he realized that what he thought were rocks were actually bones. Usually, danger didn’t frighten him but, in that moment, he couldn’t control anything. The only thing he could do was follow Lydia who seemed to be in a trance. The urge to grab her by the waist and carry her on his shoulder to take her away from that place kept getting stronger.

“Lydia… I’m just gonna throw an idea around, may be silly but… What if we turned around and I don’t know… Go somewhere nicer than here? Like a park, a restaurant, the dentist, a lecture on arachnids… Anywhere but here, really…”

He was keeping his stare on the ground and almost ran into Lydia who had stopped to turn toward him. Her eyes were on him but her stare was distant. She touched his arm, as if she was trying to comfort him, but her hand was frozen and he felt shivers down his spine. Then, she turned around and resumed walking.

Stiles sighed and followed her. After a little while, he had to slow down. Something wasn’t right. The wind carried toward them a heavy and sickly scent, forcing him to wrinkle his nose. He wished he wouldn’t recognize that smell. He had met it too many times and knew it would never leave his memory.

The smell of decomposing corpses.

To Stiles’s utter despair, Lydia kept heading toward this stench’s origin. He sped up to avoid losing her, cursing himself for not carrying any kind of weapon. The more they were moving forward, the more unbearable the smell was getting. At one point, Stiles even had to cover his nose with his sleeve to breathe without choking. Lydia remained unruffled.

She eventually stopped, facing an imposing shadow laying against the wall.

After a few seconds, Lydia started to cough and suffocate. She huddled up with a hand covering her mouth and Stiles thought she was going to be sick. When she turned around, she looked panicked but her stare met Stiles’s which seemed to soothe her.

“Stiles?... Where are we? – “

He rushed at her, took off the flannel that he wore over his shirt to roll it up into a ball. He covered her nose with it, keeping a hand against her lower back. “What do you mean _where are we_ ? You _lead us_ here!”

Her stare wandered aimlessly around them until it fastened on the mass before them. As seconds went by, their eyes adapted to the darkness and they were able to make out a man. He must have died a long time ago judging by his wounds colonized by insects and the purplish shade of his skin.

“Do you think that’s _him_?”

They let Stiles’s question float between them, neither finding the strength to specify the _him_. Lydia was clinging to Stiles’s arm and slowly detached herself from it to step forward, looking steadily at the corpse.

“Stiles, I… I know that place…”

He gulped and closed his eyes for a few seconds. It felt like he was suffocating, like he was in a nightmare and couldn’t wake up.

“From my nightmares…”

Lydia had carefully stepped closer to the corpse, letting the hand gripping Stiles’s flannel slowly fall to her side. He fought back the urge to grab her shoulder to take her away from it and simply laid his hand on her arm. “Lydia, – “

Her hand came resting above his own, cutting him off while she resumed her observation of the corpse. Stiles saw her discreetly counting her fingers and felt his heart beat a little harder, drawing a smile on his lips. Seeing Lydia taking up one of his habits was making his inside melt but it wasn’t the place or time. He tried to hide his smile, she had talked to him enough times about her nightmares for him to know that if she felt like living one, she must have been terrified. His worry was reinforced when he saw her look around with wild eyes. Kneeling beside her, he took her hand in his and tried to repress his growing feeling of nausea.

“Lydia,” Stiles delicately took her chin between his fingers, forcing her to focus on him. “Look at me, focus on my voice, everything’s alright.” When her stare finally steadied itself on him, he stood up and she followed him. But even standing, her stare turned to the corpse again. Then, Stiles took both her hands in his. “No, Lydia, look at me, only me.” She turned her head, he could tell she was fighting against herself to stay focused. “We’re safe, alright? You’re safe.” She nodded, chewing on her lips. “Talk to me… Are you sure you came here in your nightmares?”

Once again, she nodded, slower, “Yeah…” Her voice was a little choked so she cleared her throat. The sound seemed to make her fully come back to reality. She untangled her hands from Stiles’s and looked around with a more fixated stare. “There…”, she said pointing at a corner further away and stepping closer. “If we kept going, we would find a flight of stairs with a wooden plank to replace the third step.” Stiles followed her and grabbed her firmly by the waist when she got ready to walk down the stairs plunged in darkness. Without trying to move further, she turned around. “And there,” she freed herself from Stiles’s arms to head toward another corner. “That’s where he…” He came closer behind her, circling her shoulders with a protective and reassuring arm. His chest tightened and he felt his stomach turn out at the sight of human remains. They were unrecognizable but anybody could tell they were too small to be adult’s remains.

Lydia clung to Stiles’s hand, unable to avert her eyes and Stiles buried his nose in her hair just above her ear, feeling helpless against what must be going through her head. He knew her nightmares made her often feel like she was in that alley and given the utter pain printed in the pose of some corpses, he knew his small reassuring words were feeling like a coat full of holes in winter. But he tried anyway, telling her as softly as he could “It’s over, whatever was there is dead, it’s over now…”

Feeling her shaking all over in his arms, he tightened his embrace. “Lydia, come, it’s no use staying here.” But she couldn’t move and Stiles had to pull her backwards to make her avert her eyes and eventually start to walk again. He held her firmly and drove her toward the exit. They passed by the man’s corpse and Lydia pulled slightly on Stiles’s hand to make him stop. “Stiles…” She didn’t have to finish her sentence for him to understand and step closer with her without loosening his grip on her. She needed to know and truth be told, so did he. He watched as she covered her nose with his flannel again, stepping closer. Then, he followed her, pulling up the collar of his shirt to breathe through the fabric.

After a little while, Lydia averted her eyes from the corpse to look at Stiles. All he could see were her slightly wet eyes, the rest of her face being hidden behind his flannel. “That’s him…”

Her voice was weak and he didn’t know if she was telling him or asking him, but there wasn’t a doubt in his mind: it was Peter Hale. He had practiced shooting on his picture enough times to recognize him anywhere. So, he slowly nodded, not knowing how she would react and saw her shake and dissolve into tears. To make sure she wouldn’t faint and hurt herself, Stiles took the back of her head in his hand and stood up, keeping her head nestled in the crook of his neck. They stayed like that a few minutes, Stiles gently rocking Lydia while she silently cried with one of her hand clinging as tight as possible to the back of his shirt.

When her tears were replaced by quiet sniffs, Lydia lifted her head. Stiles couldn’t restrain his lips from drawing a thin smile when he caught sight of her swollen eyes. He kissed both her eyelids when something struck him, “Does your scar hurt?”

She shook her head and lifted her blouse to look at it. Stiles kneeled in front of her to have a better look. He brushed her skin from the tip of his fingers, making her slightly shiver and giving her goosebumps. The scar looked exactly the same as it had been looking for the past few months: a single white line along her hip. No pain, no burning sensation. Almost automatically, Stiles caressed her skin with his lips, not quite kissing it but with enough pressure to coax a giggle out of Lydia. She laid her left hand against his temple to make him stand up and kissed him with a tenderness that completely dazed Stiles.

Then, she started to laugh, scaring all the rats around them with a sound they had probably never heard. She stepped back, took Stiles by the hand and led him toward the daylight.

That day, the police received an anonymous phone call reporting a decomposing corpse in the Tisiphone alley. The death remained a mystery. No weapon had been found but residues of blood and flesh were found under the dead’s fingernails, suggesting that he had disemboweled himself. The corpse was burnt and the case was closed. He didn’t match any description of any missing person anyway.

 

xxxxx

 

It had started raining, forcing them to find shelter in some kind of diner that seemed to come straight out of the 70’ with its flashy colours.

Sitting across from each other on the worn out leather of the small booths, the impact of what had just happened suddenly hit them, obliterating their momentary euphoria. They remained silent during long minutes, letting their stares absently follow the wood knots and cracks on the table while the din all around them was slowly engulfing their consciousness. When the waitress brought them their large plate of fries and their milkshakes, they barely gave a hint of a smile to thank her.

After a while, Stiles lifted his head and slowly opened his mouth, still thinking about the best way to ask Lydia how she had found Peter’s corpse. But before a sound escaped his lips, he changed his mind and didn’t say anything.

As they heard a police car siren in the street, they both turned their heads to look outside. The moving blue light was refracting in the hundreds of raindrops slipping along the window and they both stayed hypnotized by that curious firework for a few seconds even after the car was gone.

Their stares met and when Stiles realized he was unable to interpret Lydia’s silent pleading, he opened his mouth.

“What happened over there?”

He wished he had phrased his question in a way that wouldn’t sound so cold and distant but his lips were burning with the need to ask.

She shrugged, turning her eyes towards the street and seemed to follow the slow race of the colourless raindrops along the window. “I don’t know,” she answered in a distant voice. “I remember telling myself that Peter was maybe the monster the man was talking about and in one blink, I’m heaving in front of his corpse…”

“Is it the same as what happened in Spain?”

A shiver ran cold down Stiles’s spine at the memory. He had rarely felt such terror as when he had seen her empty bed and then, when he had found her catatonic in the train station. Many times that night, when she had eventually fallen asleep in his arms, he had wondered what could have happened if he hadn’t woken up soon enough to find her before the opening of the train station, before the police…

She shrugged again, her red tongue wetting her lips before answering with a voice as empty as her stare. “Kind of… Not really…”

Stiles nodded slowly several times, his look and thoughts losing themselves in the same emptiness as Lydia. “How – “ He let his words hang in mid-air, quivering somewhere between them, unable to verbalize his thoughts.

“What?” She had eventually turned her head to look at him and Stiles had to lower his gaze. She knew what he wanted to ask and he could read in her eyes how much she was already annoyed with his question. “Stiles, please stop beating about the bush and ask your damn question.”

“How did you know he was there?”

Closing her eyes a few seconds, she breathed in deeply. When she opened them again, her stare had lost some of its anger.

“I didn’t know where I was going, if that’s your question. It’s not the first time I’ve found a dead body without knowing why or how…”

Unaware of his body language, Stiles let out a sigh and looked away, which only made Lydia’s anger surface again.

“What do you want me to say?” She resumed, raising her voice before pursing her lips when she realized the waitress was frowning at them. Trying to suppress the infuriation in her tone, she added, “I don’t have the answer. Believe me, I wish I had… But I don’t. You cannot blame me for that. I blame myself enough, thank you…”

“I know, I know, I’m sorry… It’s just…” He nervously raked his fingers through his hair and continued, trying to keep his voice as low as possible to avoid drawing attention. “I’m just trying to understand. I’ve been looking for him for years and you –”

He was fighting hard against himself to not let his bitterness get the best out of him. She hadn’t done anything wrong after all.

Suddenly, reality hit Lydia in full force and she finished the sentence Stiles had left hanging. “And I find him without even looking for him or knowing how…”

Ashamed of his own thoughts, Stiles nodded and stared at the raindrops on the window.

“I don’t blame you, that’s not the problem, I’d just like to understand, you know? I spent so many years… _Wasted_ so many years… I could have been looking for you instead.” A sad smile stretched on his lips at that. He had forbidden himself to see her or even think about her while she was clearly the answer to all his questions. She was raising other ones, of course, but the change was more than welcomed. He heaved a long sigh. “And all of it seems so useless now. I could have done so many other things with my life. I always thought that the moment I’d find him, it would… I don’t know, I’d feel better I guess…” He had to stop to find the right words, burying his head in his hands. “But it doesn’t change anything… I’m still the same boy who took a plane to cross the ocean more than ten years ago. My parents are still dead, it won’t bring back Allison and it won’t give you back the years that bastard stole from you, or from Scott…”

When he raised his head to meet her stare, she was looking at him with a wrecked expression that broke his heart. She opened her mouth, almost stumbling over every word she was using while fixing the untouched milkshake in front of her.

“Is that really what you think? That you’re still the same? That everything that happened was useless?”

“No, come on Lyds, that’s not what I meant…” She was drawing circles in the condensation of her glass and he instinctively grabbed her hand to catch her attention. His voice was so soft it made her eyes tear up. “What I meant was that I thought I _had_ to seek some revenge on him for everything and everyone we lost. I thought it would help me find peace. But it doesn’t. They aren’t less dead and it doesn’t fill the emptiness they left behind.”

“Maybe… But it still led you to me and you saved my life, Stiles… So, if you say it was all useless, I – “

“Lydia,” he cut her off, squeezing her hand a little harder and blaming himself again for making her believe he was regretting the choices that had led them here. “If there’s one thing I don’t regret, that’s you, you know that, right?” He brought her hand to his lips and faintly kissed it. “You can’t doubt it, not after all this time. Please, tell me you know it because if you say I saved your life, there's no word for what you did for me.” A sad laugh escaped his lips, soon replaced by an adoring smile when she brought his hand in hers and kissed it while beaming at him. “You brought me so much more than I could have imagined,” he continued with a choked voice. “The knowledge that this fucker is finally dead is weightless in comparison… I’m angry at myself for ever thinking it could magically change everything. I was blinded by my own rage… And now that you’re here with me, I can’t believe how lost and wrong I was. You’ve always been it for me and I don’t know how I could have forgotten that for so long… Nothing makes me happier than you.”

Lydia smiled bashfully at him and opened his hand to kiss his palm and wrist, increasing the beating of Stiles’s heart. “Yeah, I know what you mean…” she whispered against his skin before letting go of his hand to hide behind her hands. “I’m sorry, it’s just…” She slowly ran her fingers through her hair and pulled at the roots. “I just feel _so_ lost. It scares me… Not knowing what happened terrifies me. I thought I got rid of that bond with him but I still found his corpse!” Her voice was shaking with rage and her eyes were starting to glow with anger. She quickly wiped away her unshed tears with a groan. “I’m so sick of it and I’m sick of crying and sobbing over nothing without being able to stop! You have no idea how frustrating it is to do something without knowing how it works!”

Stiles couldn’t stop a small laugh from escaping his mouth. Not knowing how her powers worked was upsetting her even more than what had actually happened. He raised his hands to apologize when she glared at him.

“I’m sorry, sorry…” He stayed frozen a few more seconds, looking at her with that half smile she liked so much which eventually made her laugh under her breath. That sound had the effect of a puff of fresh air, lightening the mood. “Let’s try to understand, then, shall we?” Lydia wiped her eyes one more time, looking more relaxed and nodded. “I’m gonna be the outside observer,” Stiles resumed, “and ask you some questions. You’ll answer as honestly as possible, alright?” Trying to cheer her up a little more and thinking about the time they had went shopping and she had ogled at him with an enticing spark in her eyes, he winked while adding, “picture me with a hat and a grey suit…”

She giggled softly and straightened in her seat, tilting her head. “Grey? I like you better in that dark blue suit you have.”

“Alright, dark blue it is. Ready?”

“Oh, I’m always ready for you, _detective_ Stilinski… Just one question though… Could you take off your jacket at one moment and roll up your sleeves? And then stand up with your hands in your pockets and frown while looking at me? And loosen your tie, obviously…” Stiles felt his cheeks heat up under her playful gaze and her teasing tone. Of course, she would beat him at his own game.

“Yeah… I… I could do that…”, he answered hoarsely, gulping and trying to focus his attention on what was preoccupying them and not on the way Lydia had pronounced the word _detective_ like it was a chocolate she was rolling over her tongue.

It made her smile. She crossed her legs under the table and now that the air had been cleared from any heaviness, she replied with a more neutral tone. “I’m sorry, I’ll stop…” She laughed and took a sip of her strawberry milkshake, looking down and suddenly shy.

When she lifted her head, they stared at each other and burst out laughing. It was ridiculous. The same glimmer of disbelief passed through their eyes. Maybe flirting was their own way to cope with the traumatic event of the day… Stiles felt like if Lydia wasn’t there to ground him to something familiar, he would drift and float away. In front of him was a life without Peter Hale and even if it had been months since he had stopped looking for him, his death put a lid on that part of his life. He had his entire life ahead of him and it made him a little dizzy. Silently thanking all the deities in the world for Lydia Martin and her ability to tether him to a solid ground, he leaned forward to kiss her and she met him halfway over the table. She tasted like strawberry. Stiles cupped her cheek to kiss her more, her laugh vibrating against his lips. “I think I’m in love with you,” he whispered before she sat down.

She chuckled faintly and planted another kiss on his lips, whispering as well, “I think I might be too.”

Stiles felt his pulse pound stronger at his ears as he realized it was the first time they said such things to each other, despite them being more than obvious. Since they had began their road trip through Europe, Stiles was finally breathing, letting himself enjoy the simple and good things life had to offer. But there was something different about that moment. For the first time since his mother passed away, he was letting that little voice he had always hushed speak louder than the others. Because for the first time in his entire life, his future happiness wasn’t just a wishful thinking, it was right in front of him.

They sat down, keeping their fingers intertwined on the table.

“So,” Lydia eventually said, “ask me your questions.”

“Yeah, yes,” Stiles cleared his throat before resuming. “Do you remember what you had felt in Spain when you went to the train station? Was is the same?”

“I don’t remember much from that moment but it wasn’t exactly the same. In Spain, it was as if my body and mind were tools he was using. Today, I felt _carried_ more then _pushed_ if that makes sense… Something was drawing me to him but it wasn’t weighing on my shoulders, it wasn’t scary, it was… light.”

“And your scar didn’t pull once?”

“No… Not even this morning or when we arrived, I didn’t notice anything.”

“So, one thing is 99 percent sure, it wasn’t your connection to Peter that drew you to him.”

“Yeah… But it wasn’t me either…”

“What do you mean?”

“I felt… some sort of presence with me, inside of me.”

“Someone?”

“I don’t know, maybe?”

Stiles slightly frowned, trying to clarify his thoughts. “Did you ever feel that same way?”

“Never like that, no. You remember I told you Alan explained to me you helped me fight back against Peter’s…invasions, right?” Stiles nodded. “Well, you help me because I can feel a tether between us, something anchoring me to the Earth so to say. But earlier, it was different. I felt tied to something or someone but it wasn’t coming… from _here_.”

“From _here_? You mean not from the Earth?” He was preparing his brain to accept the idea that Lydia was communicating with aliens but she seemed to read his mind and smiled while patting his hand.

“Not like that, you goofball! No, I mean more like something dead or from the past. Something that wouldn’t have an anchor _here_ like you can have. It was both in me and somewhere else, it made me… stronger somehow, a little nostalgic also. Like… Like some sensation you’d have forgotten and is suddenly coming back to you.”

“Like a memory?” Stiles asked, he started to have a good picture of the situation but couldn’t connect all the dots yet. What she was describing was reminding him of what he had felt while dancing in Prague streets. “The memory of long-gone friends or old stories you like to recall because they make you feel… warm and cosy?”

“Do you mean like what happened when we shared our memories?” He shrugged and nodded. “But, it can’t be the same… I wasn’t in some… fugue state, I remember everything in Prague and there wasn’t any dead body – “ She left her words in mid-air and absently looked at Stiles, trying to figure something out.

“Yeah, but if it was the same kind of feeling, it can still mean som-“ He stopped when he saw Lydia’s eyes widen. “What?”

“Allison…”

Stiles felt his eyes open as round as Lydia’s and he swore his heart stopped beating five entire seconds. He slowly wetted his lips with the tip of his tongue before resuming.

“Al- Allison drew you to him?”

“I don’t know… Do you think?” He shrugged again, completely unable to put his thoughts back on track. When she continued, Lydia’s stare was distant. “I saw her at the hospital. When I was with Deaton and my scar suddenly burnt. I saw Peter and I saw her. I… I think she killed him and led me to him.”

Stiles frowned, forcing his brain to focus again. “But, you said you had felt a presence inside you, not beside you… When you were drawn to his corpse, it wasn’t like something you were witnessing from the outside, right?”

“No…” Her stare lost its distance and focused on Stiles again, she crossed her legs the other way. “But what does it have to do with all the rest?”

The question Stiles would have to ask next wasn’t an easy one. He tried to phrase it in his head and took Lydia’s hands in his own.

“I’m sorry to ask you that but… What happened when you felt her death? Allison’s death…”

She slowly gulped and Stiles squeezed her hands a little harder. “It was… As if I was being stabbed and at the same time, I was watching her… die” She choked on that last word. “I screamed so loud… I don’t think I ever screamed that loud. Then, when it was over, there was a weight crushing my chest and preventing me from standing… like a string or a rope wrapped around me and dragging me down.”

“I’m sorry, Lyds…” he said, kissing her knuckles firmly and feeling awful for making her reminisce her traumas but it was a necessary question. His voice was soft when he resumed. “So, it felt more like what you felt during your nightmares, right? Which makes sense because you were going through Peter, so to say. But it was different today, right? Like it was different in Prague…”

She nodded and looked down.

“So, it wasn’t Allison?” When she lifted her head, she looked so disappointed that Stiles almost wanted to reassure her and tell her that it was actually Allison. But something was telling him it wasn’t that easy. Besides, it could be dangerous to make her believe she was able to communicate with Allison.

“I didn’t say that. If you saw Allison and if your feelings tell you it’s all connected, then she must have something to do with it.”

“Or maybe it was just another of his mind tricks…” She took her head in her hands and exhaled slowly. Stiles really wished he could say something to help her but nothing came to his mind, so he waited until she lifted her head. “Can we just head back to the house?”

“Yes, yeah, of course,” he answered standing up and holding out his hand. She took it and leaned against him as they paid and walked out.

 

xxxxxx

 

Lydia went straight to bed to take a nap. “We’ll stay here as long as you need, alright?” Stiles told her, kissing Lydia’s cheek as she snuggled under the blanket. “We’ll figure it out, I promise.”

She turned around to face him and tried to throw a reassuring smile at him, “I know,” she replied in a low voice. “Can you wake me up when you start making dinner? I wanna cook with you.”

“You mean, you wanna watch me cook?”

Lydia scoffed at his smirk and closed her eyes, “Yeah, I wanna watch you cook.”

As she slowly fell asleep, he stood up from the bed and quietly went to the door.

“Stiles?”

“Yeah?” he turned around and smiled at her sleepy stare and heavy fluttering eyelids.

“Thank you for being there for me.”

“I’ll always be there for you, Lyds.”

If he hadn’t gazed at her a little longer, he would have missed the tiny “I know” she whispered in her sleep. With a last smile, he closed the door and let her rest.

 

xxxxxx

 

Stiles had spent the night tossing and turning, tormented by what Lydia had told him. He knew he could solve it, he knew he could figure it out, but there was a missing piece to the puzzle he just couldn’t find. It was driving him crazy. When he woke up at 7 AM, he figured he must have slept three hours maybe, but no more than four. Lydia’s side in the bed was cold and empty and it jolted him awake.

He stood up, put a shirt on and hurried to the living room. By now, he knew that Lydia’s side being empty didn’t mean she had run away, but his heart seemed to be always slower than his mind when Lydia was concerned. Like it still feared she would abandon him to live a better life.

She was reading a book in an armchair, a few “cosy” scented candles lit on the coffee table and wrapped in one of his hoodies.

“Morning, gorgeous,” he told her as she lifted her head to greet him with a smile still full of sleep.

“Hi,” she pursed her lips, “what are you doing up so early?”

Stiles came closer to her and leaned over the armchair to kiss her. “Couldn’t sleep, and you?”

“Same…”

“When did you get up?”

“Around five, I think.” She laid her book on the coffee table and rubbed her eyes. “I need to figure it out, Stiles. I hate that it bothers me so much, but it does… I need to know if it has something to do with Allison, I need to know what he did to my mind…”

“I get it Lydia,” Stiles kneeled in front of her and took her hands, “I swear I’ll help you. I know we can figure it out, okay?” She nodded and leaned her forehead against his.

Stiles eventually broke the silence, yawning. “Come on, I’ll cook you breakfast. We can’t think on an empty stomach.”

 

xxxxx

 

They were silently eating, both deep in their thoughts. Lydia was blaming herself for bringing them back into the supernatural world, into Peter’s world… She was afraid Stiles would eventually contact someone from his past or someone who would be able to help them and she didn’t want that. He wasn’t ready; she could read it in his eyes sometimes, hear it in the way he would deeply exhale in his disturbed sleeps on some nights. The idea that he would still do whatever it would take to help her was scaring her because her happiness wasn’t worth his sanity. They had to find another way.

She was so focused on her idea, trying to concentrate without really knowing what she was looking for that she didn’t even notice Stiles’s stare on her. He was fidgeting with his fork, repeating their conversation from the day before in his head to put his finger on something. There had to be something he had missed…

The silence was slowly making him more and more nervous. “You know what bothers me the most? What you said yesterday, the way you phrased it… I keep feeling like it’s familiar, you know? Like I’ve heard it before.”

Lydia didn’t reply right away. Her gaze was distant, focused on something Stiles couldn’t see or hear.

“Lydia?”

Still looking somewhere behind Stiles’s shoulders, she answered with a faraway edge to her voice. “ _Ideas que habían pasado muchas veces aleteando como pájaros nocturnos sobre su cabeza, pero que se le desbarataban en un reguero de plumas cuando trataba de atraparlas._ ”

“What?”

His voice made her avert her eyes and she looked at him, but she still seemed lost in her daydream, “Ideas that had often fluttered around her head like nocturnal birds but dissolved into a trickle of feathers when she tried to catch hold of them.”

A flood of repressed memories came back to Stiles, “ _Love in the Time of Cholera_?”

It seemed to break Lydia out of her trance, “What?”

“That’s the book, right? _Love in the Time of Cholera_ by Gabriel Garcia Marquez.” Stiles frowned, not understanding why Lydia would quote that book and why it sounded so important. As Lydia was opening her mouth to reply something, it hit Stiles. “That’s it!”

“What’s it?”

Lydia was staring at him, confused about what had just happened and trying to understand what a Colombian novelist had to do with her situation.

“Lydia, you’re so smart, I –“ He didn’t finish his sentence and leaned over the table to plant a sloppy kiss on her lips that only reached her nose.

“What’s happening?” She asked, laughing.

Stiles sat back. “I don’t have the answer, but I think I may have a lead… Oh my God, I can’t believe I didn’t think about her sooner!” His eyes were wide and he had covered his mouth with his hand, not looking at anything in particular.

As he had stopped talking, Lydia tried to bring his attention back to her, “Her?”

It seemed to be enough to help him focus on her again. “There are so many things my brain has hidden from me…” he gulped, visibly shaken and continued slowly. “Sad things mostly, like that one. I can’t remember exactly when it was, or where. I must have been in… England, or maybe Ireland.”

He leaned back on his chair, crossing his arms and looking down. Only listening to the tug in her chest, Lydia stood up to sit next to him and held his hand. The movement made Stiles lift his head, a look of gratitude in his eyes. He let her uncross his arms and stroke his hands on the table. She was so close he just had to tilt his head slightly to lean it against hers. Hypnotized, he stared at her fingers tracing smoothing circles on his hands and wrists.

Seeing him so small and vulnerable made Lydia sick. She would have wanted to be strong enough already to make an armour out of her body to protect him from all his demons, everything that stopped him from shining as bright as the Sun. She tried to calm her racing heart. As she was breathing better, she felt Stiles relax and when he started telling his story, his voice was more composed.

“Some years ago, as I was following one of my leads, I kept running on the same woman on the crime scenes. I could tell she wasn’t there on purpose, but it wasn’t a coincidence either. There was something about her behaviour… She always looked… lost.” He sighed and turned his stare toward Lydia. “When I think about it now, I guess she acted the same way you did when you found Peter.” Lydia felt her mouth opening in a silent _oh_ , but she didn’t say anything to not interrupt him. Stiles shook his head, “Not exactly like you, actually. There was something about her… She didn’t look like she _belonged_ here, you know? Wild eyes and muttering things, as if she was talking to someone. She was always casting frightened glances all around her, even when she seemed to have _woken up_. And the second the police arrived, she would take off, even more scared.”

Stiles didn’t know what or why he had that feeling but he knew there was something supernatural about her. Unfortunately, she had always ran away before he could talk to her. The same thing kept happening until the day he didn’t see her.

“I randomly found her a few days later, panhandling on a church’s steps. She looked even more wrecked than the other times I had seen her. If I hadn’t heard what she was muttering, I wouldn’t have recognized her.”

“What was she saying?”

Swallowing slowly, Stiles answered with his eyes closed and a broken voice, “ _Where is he?_ Over and over again, just like on the crime scenes.”

The tears Lydia could hear in his voice tightened her chest and she felt the urge to take Stiles in her arms. She circled his shoulders and laid her head against the nape of his neck, finding peace in the weight of his cheek against her shoulder and the brush of his breath against her skin.

“Who had she lost?” she asked in a low voice.

Stiles slowly lowered his head and kissed her lips to push the darkness inside of him away. “Her emotional tether.”

“That’s… awful…” Why did it feel like the worst thing that could happen to someone? She was suddenly overwhelmed by the fear of floating in some kind of other dimension, without anyone to tether her to the Earth, to life and it was unbearable. Her hands clung tighter around Stiles.

“It is,” he answered with another kiss.

“Do you think she was like me?”

He shrugged and stood up to grab some tissues, gesturing Lydia to follow him on the couch. They sat and Lydia wrapped her arm around Stiles’s shoulders, playing absently with his soft hair.

“I can’t tell if she was like you. To me, she wasn’t making any sense at the time. I bought a few things for her with the little money I had and sat next to her. She told me she came from Spain, I can’t remember what she was doing in Britain… I couldn’t understand everything she was saying, it was in Spanish half the time. What I remember is that she was blaming herself for not being able to help, she knew she could, but didn’t know how to trigger her abilities anymore. She said she used to feel tethered to the Earth and to something else, _not from here_.”

Lydia shivered. If that woman was indeed like her, it meant there was a way to control those abilities, whatever they were.

“I think she heard voices,” Stiles continued, “she kept talking to them. Do you have that too?”Hearing no answer, Stiles untangled himself from her embrace to look at her. Lydia almost looked mortified. “Lydia, hey…” he took her quivering chin between his fingers and forced her to look at him. “You don’t have to be ashamed with me, come on…”

His voice was so soft, his touch so gentle and his stare filled with so much adoration, she couldn’t contain her sobs any longer and buried her head in his hoodie, engulfing herself in his presence. He hugged her tightly, rubbing her head in smooth circles until she was able to answer.

“I… I hear them sometimes.” Her voice was muffled by his hoodie and he loosened his embrace.

“Why did you never tell me?”

Lydia wiped her eyes and folded her legs on the couch to rest her head on Stiles’s lap. “Because I was ashamed,” she answered quietly. “And besides, I almost haven’t heard any since I met you…”

“ _Almost_ is too much,” he continued while tenderly combing her hair with his fingers, “especially if you don’t know how to control it… I told you right from the beginning: there’s nothing you could tell me that would make me think you’re crazy.”

Her head shook lightly with a silent laugh. “I know,” she whispered and turned on her back to look at him. “What happened after?”

“That’s the most unclear part, but that’s also probably the part that could help us… She said she had to go to the cafeteria in some city I couldn’t understand. But now, I’m sure she meant Chisinau. She also told something about a Nemeton… You remember what I told you about it, right?”

Lydia nodded and shuddered, was there a Nemeton nearby? “Anything else?”

Sighing, Stiles ran a hand through his hair and behind his neck, “I can’t remember. She wanted to go there because she was sure she’d find answers. Then, she handed me her _Love in the Time of Cholera_ edition, she used the bilingual one to learn English... she told me I’d need it someday. I wanted to give it back to her, but… the next day, It was _her_ corpse on the crime scene.”

“I’m sorry, Stiles…” she rubbed the hand he still had in her hair. “Do you still have it?”

Stiles shook his head. “I lost it one day. It intrigued me so much I kept reading it over and over again, but I never found anything,” a laugh escaped his lips. “I can’t believe the answer was you, you’re always the answer… I should know it by now.”

Lydia smiled affectionately and straightened up. “I’m gonna grab your laptop and we’re gonna look for cafeterias in Chisinau or any mention of a Nemeton, it will be a start.”

“But it’s weird, right? A _cafeteria_? What are we looking for exactly?”

“I don’t know,” she answered with a shrug. “It is weird, but it’s our only lead for now.”

She stood up with one last kiss and as she left the room, Stiles let out a heavy sigh. Whatever they would find, he swore to himself to not let it hurt Lydia in any way. Peter’s shadow wouldn’t haunt her anymore, he would make sure of that.

As Lydia entered their bedroom and found Stiles’s laptop, she inhaled deeply. Whatever they would find, she swore to herself to not let it hurt him in any way. There wouldn’t be any sword of Damocles above Stiles’s pretty head, not anymore. She would make sure of that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If I made some mistakes with the Spanish, please tell me!
> 
> Thank you all for still reading it, commenting and giving it kudos :)
> 
> Let me know what you think, it makes me happy every time!


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